Merlin
by urapente
Summary: Shepard reluctantly recounts his past. Takes place after the events of Mass Effect 2, but is primarily recollection of events prior to the first game.
1. Chapter 1

The belly of the _Normandy_ was stuffed with the cables, conduits, pipes, and countless minor technological miracles needed to support a vessel of its size and capability. Privately held ships often obscured the bewildering clutter with sharply detailed panels, perhaps emblazoned with the ship's name or that of its builder, but this was not true of the _Normandy_. She had been assembled quickly, secretly, and with limited resources compared with those of the Alliance - despite the fact that Cerberus was, or at least had been, an extremely rich and powerful organization.

The ship still managed to surpass her namesake in almost all conceivable ways, particularly after the many upgrades that had been made prior to its fateful trip through the Omega Four relay. Still, there were no panels. There had not been time. Nobody had wanted to sign off on the additional budget requirements in a project that had long overrun its most pessimistic cost estimates. The Illusive Man would settle for nothing but the best, yet would have been...less than pleased with further costs. To satisfy both constraints, the omission of the panels was explained away by harried project managers as "for ease of access to damaged systems during anticipated combat operations."

Whatever the reason, Shepard felt strangely at peace as he ducked beneath a support beam and some low hanging data cables. The engineer at his core liked to see the guts of his ship. The way the floor vibrated and hummed beneath his feet from the machinery; the cold, dry air on his bare arms, the faint smell of ozone. The ship was alive and he could sense the evidence of its beating heart, feel the lifeblood of data and power coursing through its veins. The sound of his footsteps rang through the cramped maintenance corridor as his boots met the utilitarian mesh of the floor. He squeezed past a hastily installed capacitor that jutted into the walkway - necessitated by the weapons and shield upgrades - and slipped into a small alcove with a console embedded into the wall. Everything was bathed in an amber glow by the screen and the status telltales embedded into the circuits and even the cables.

Shepard was beginning to believe he had finally done it. He was grinning like an idiot as he brought up the corediag interface and worked through the navigation to display a very specific system. Numbers didn't lie. The great Commander Shepard was perilously close to giggling out loud.

"Oh, you are slipping..." he muttered as the statistics seemed to float into the air in front of him. The amused smile was replaced by determined concentration as he traced down through the result with his finger. There.

Nominal? How in the-

"I see someone still thinks that he can outsmart the _finest_ engineer in the Fleet," a voice purred behind him.

Damn.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said as he turned from the console with a blank expression. "What are you doing down here?"

"As if you don't know," Tali replied tartly, gracefully slinking into the alcove. He noticed she wore the more darkly colored flourishes on her suit that she used when on duty. He struggled to hold his amusement back as she leaned past him and flicked through to older results with mock agitation. The reflection of the readouts glittered in her visor as the pale eyes behind it scanned the data. Extending her finger, she pointed at a blinking red cell in the cluttered table of results. "You cause a quarter percent deviation in the mass effect field lines, and it's _not_ another attempt to get something past me?"

He attempted to look innocent as she crossed her arms and faced him in the cramped space. "My, aren't we jumping at shadows today? That's just a hair outside the norm. Maybe our lead drive technician - that's you, by the way - did some sloppy work."

Tali was giving him a condescending look. "And I suppose that the sudden ramping up of the ECM, causing a dramatic shift in energy usage at just the right time was entirely coincidental?"

"Tali. That has been scheduled since last week. We even had to tell the local authorities we'd be doing it."

"All at the same time?"

"Call it a stress test."

Bouncing lightly on her toes, it was obvious she was enjoying herself. And quite possibly holding something back to really rub it in. But she would have to be some kind of voodoo war god to find-

"And the powerful electromagnet that _somebody_ left in conduit J-12, that just happened to be configured to trip at two hertz while being completely undocumented?"

His face fell.

"I uh...well, that's..."

"Commander," she said firmly, "if you're trying to tease me..." She pressed a finger against his chest, making him stumble back against the wall. "...you'll have to try harder."

He raised his hands in surrender. "Ok, you got me. Again." He laughed. "At least you can take a joke."

"True," she agreed slyly, "I'm spending my nights with you, aren't I?"

They both laughed at that, as Shepard put his arms around her waist and pulled her closer. "If there are complaints, I'm pretty sure we've got this ship well stocked with healthy, willing men of various species-"

She squirmed in his grasp, freeing her arms to encircle his wrists with her hands and pin them against the wall. Her grip was surprisingly powerful; quarians seemed to be universally lithe, but it only hid their strength - although nobody would compare them to the krogan. She inclined her head towards him, meeting his gaze directly.

"I've already got one, _bosh'tet_. I don't suppose _you_ have any complaints?"

Despite their flirting before, he was a little thrown off by her sudden intensity. For a moment, there was only the white noise of the ship overflowing into the alcove. Then he noticed a strange sensation spreading from his wrists - like a static charge, coupled with a feeling like his hands had fallen asleep. His eyes widened as he noticed the mischief in Tali's gaze.

"What- but I thought you said you didn't like the nerve stim-"

Behind the gleaming visor her eyes shone as she pressed against him.

"Call it a stress test," she whispered.

* * *

After the adventure beyond the Omega Four relay, the current state of affairs was very much up in the air. Angry words had been exchanged between Shepard and the shadowy head of Cerberus, the so-called Illusive Man, after he had elected to destroy the abomination in collector space. The Illusive Man had abruptly cut the connection, and no communications had been forthcoming from any arm of Cerberus since then. In light of the uncertainty, and without any resistance from a curiously pensive Agent Lawson, Shepard decided to provide his crew - those that had survived their internment in the collector pods - with much needed shore leave on Terra Nova. Despite his current arm's length relationship with the Alliance, they were welcomed to the system by still grateful local officials. The reception by the Alliance security detachment was somewhat cooler, but cordial enough, probably thanks to pressure from the civilian government. The look of shock on the young ensign's face when Shepard hailed the lead patrol vessel had been quite amusing to him as well.

He had spent only a few hours on the surface celebrating with his crew. Prior to their departure to the surface, he had grown so tired of Garrus' knowing glances whenever Tali was in the same room that he had been about to put him out the airlock. The last he saw of him before he left the packed nightclub they had taken over, his friend had a drink in one hand with his other arm around a beautiful local woman in a very...precisely tailored gown who had seemed to gravitate towards him from the moment he entered the place. He grinned. Maybe Garrus wasn't all talk after all.

Shepard sat in Joker's usual spot, shifting the displays to look over the multitude of systems in the ship while running scheduled checks. He had taken third shift. On a military vessel, there were no day-night cycles as such since the ship operated in a perpetual state of readiness. Still, there always developed a "night shift" when offline maintenance was performed and the ship operated in a standby or on-call mode. Prior to his command role he had preferred these as an opportunity to become more familiar with his ships. Now he had to delegate, but having such a small skeleton crew left aboard gave him the opportunity to lapse into old habits at least for a while. Even EDI was running deep CRC scans on her databanks.

This was where he belonged. Systems either worked or they didn't. On or off, yes or no. Hard facts. Technical problems didn't tend to be political. One could learn everything about a system in time, while people he had known for years could surprise him every day with some new facet of personality. When hardware began to act up, the issue could be tracked down and repaired or replaced with well-established procedures or with logical processes of elimination. When _people_ broke down the decisions were less obvious, less black-and-white, more shades of gray. Sometimes they couldn't be easily replaced. Sometimes they couldn't be repaired. Sometimes, they fought against any attempts of assistance. Or they gave up and had to be worked around. When machines seemed to do that, there was always a reason that could be found later. This was not always true with people. People weren't machines. When they _behaved_ like machines, there was something _wrong_ with them.

"Shepard? There you are," called a voice from behind him, interrupting his thoughts. It was Tali. He turned slightly in the chair and waved over his shoulder. She had left Terra Nova with him, earning a final smirking glance and raised eyebrow from Garrus. He reflexively rubbed at his wrist. The result had been unexpected, to say the least. The wonders of technology. She draped her arms over his shoulders, laying her hands across his chest. He reached up and took her hand, tenderly massaging it between his fingers.

"I checked medical first, you know," she said lightly.

"I'm not that fragile, Miss Zorah." he laughed.

"Sounds like a challenge to me."

Hmm.

"Make of it what you will. What brings you up here at this hour? If you've found something wrong, I can honestly say I didn't do it."

She was quiet for a moment. "You didn't spend much time down on the surface. You've seemed really...I don't know, you seem a little distant."

He craned his neck to look up at her. The concern in her eyes was touching - had it shown that much? He smiled reassuringly up at her.

"Don't worry about me. I've just been thinking about some things. You know I'm not the only one who stayed on the ship..."

"Grunt doesn't really count, Shepard. He's not the partying type. No need to talk about Legion's reasons for staying aboard."

He shrugged. "I guess that's true. And I'm glad you decided to come back with me."

She squeezed his hand. "I want to be with you, Shepard." Her eyes looked away from him uncertainly. "I've noticed, recently...when you spend time alone, you seem different. Like you're somewhere else. Are you sure...?"

Tali knew him well. No easy answer came immediately to mind.

Maybe it was time. Probably long overdue. His heart pounded as he struggled with the desire to keep his silence, while he also wanted Tali to know everything. A cold sweat broke out as the memories involuntarily came to the fore. With how he felt about his past...how would _she_ respond to it? He was sure now that he loved her. But what about Tali...when she knew it all?

"Do you remember," he found himself saying in a low voice, "when you told me about Prazza?"

Her arms stiffened, and her grip on his hand suddenly became almost painful. "I remember, Shepard," she said in a carefully even tone, "and I'm not sure why you would bring it up now."

"It's not what you think," he said quickly. "It's just...that meant a lot to me, Tali. That you would tell me that, with all the baggage that could have entailed."

She relaxed slightly. "It just came out. I trust you. I wanted you to know that."

Her response didn't make him feel any less guilty for keeping silent for so long.

"I...thank you. I trust you too, with my life, I just-" He sighed. "I'm not sure what you..."

He stopped. There wasn't a good way to explain his hesitation, either she would accept it or she wouldn't. He steeled himself.

"EDI. Do not make a record of this conversation. Monitor and alert only for critical conditions. Security mode, personal level one."

"Affirmative, Commander Shepard," the AI responded, and was silent.

"Shepard?" Tali asked tentatively, moving around the chair and trying to pierce his frozen gaze.

Rather than respond directly, he suddenly reached out and punched coordinates into the console, bringing up a map of the Ismar Frontier. There was a system off to the side highlighted with a blinking amber sphere. He brought the map over to the larger main display, overwriting the information on the shield generators that had been onscreen before.

"Do you know about this slice of heaven?" he asked quietly, zooming in to reveal a binary system. Tali's eyes narrowed as she stepped forward and took it in. When she didn't answer, Shepard continued. "Sambhavita. Potential, possibility...hope. I forget which. M3 red dwarf, G2 companion."

Little labels appeared on the map, denoting tiny Sambhavita Prime and brilliantly yellow Sambhavita Beta along with the various planetary bodies. Prime had several, Beta had none. Tali studied it, watching as the stars slowly circled each other, the planets in enormously exaggerated sizes orbiting around Prime. Finally she turned to him with a confused look. He could tell she was consciously avoiding wringing her hands, that she was anxious and uncertain.

"I don't know this system. What is this, Shepard?"

The smile he gave her was like a death's head. Tali quickly looked back at the map and adjusted the cowl over her helmet. He chuckled underneath his breath, rubbed at the vanished scar on his jaw.

"Maybe you know it by another name. Perhaps you have heard of Vishnu's Folly?"

She stood very still. Not even breathing.

"I see you are familiar with it now."

"In the Flotilla, we only heard rumors," she said as she turned slowly back to him. "I remember that I was on a training cruise with Auntie Raan..."

He fixed his eyes onto the point of Sambhavita Prime, and shrugged. "Probably, it was worse than you heard...even with the way things get magnified as the story is told and retold across the relays." He turned the chair to face her as she stood to the side, leaning forward and clasping his hands in his lap. "After all, you only heard what grew out of the official version of events."

"Shepard, are you saying that you had some part in what happened there?" she asked in an oddly pitched voice.

Shepard felt as if he were standing on a precipice. He could put his foot out over the edge...perhaps fall. Or there could be a path there that he didn't see. Alternatively, he could turn back. It wasn't too late. Explain it all away, avoid tearing down the image of Commander Shepard that Tali had built up in her mind.

Not the real Shepard, there.

He had to know. She had to. He could only give her the truth. Sighing deeply, he felt suddenly tired yet relieved at having made the decision. Had she felt that way before, with Prazza?

"I am," he said, running his hand over the stubble on his head. "I've felt the influence ever since, I will for the rest of my life."

"But you never said anything..."

He shook his head, meeting her uneasy gaze. "Couldn't. It's all classified. I could have lost my commission, been court martialed, worse." He snorted a laugh. "I guess it doesn't matter now, or I don't care. You need to know."

She was still confused. "Why now? Why not...Shepard, not even before that insane trip through the relay?"

Oh boy. "Tali-"

"I _gave_ myself to you," she said in an amazed voice, "and you keep something like this from me?"

"I wanted to tell you. Hell, back on Freedom's Progress I wanted to!"

She crossed her arms, leaning back against the console. He had seen this mood before.

"Why didn't you?"

"It...wasn't the right time." It felt completely pathetic as he said it.

"Keelah. Yet you felt it was the right time to lay your hands on me-"

Her voice broke and she jerked her glare angrily away from him. Inwardly, he was shocked by his own selfishness. He could only stare miserably at the floor between his feet. He heard her move away.

"I've got work to do in engineering," she grated, walking back towards the lift.

Raising his head, he watched her go. There was a sense of finality...more than just her leaving the room. A surge of panic energized him.

"Tali, wait!" he called. She didn't slow, not missing a step. He stood up. This could backfire, badly, but if he tried to restrain her he could have a fight on his hands. "Don't make it an order, Tali'Zorah."

Tali stopped abruptly, standing stiffly halfway across the command deck from him. She did not turn.

"Commander," she said bitterly, "if I'm not a member of your crew, you can't order me around."

Shepard swallowed. It wasn't an idle threat, coming from her. Tali was stubborn, headstrong, with little patience for those who didn't meet her high standards of selflessness. More than anything, though, she placed immense value on trust and loyalty. He had seen that come into play time and time again. She had extended that trust to him completely, and he had not reciprocated. Of course she would be furious.

"Listen," he said more quietly, feeling a little foolish addressing her with her back turned to him, "back on Freedom's Progress...before we met with Giravi, I passed out. I told you then that I wanted to let you know why."

"And what does that have to do with anything? You never did."

"I'm telling you now."

She didn't respond for a moment, but finally sighed and turned grudgingly to face him, her stance combative. "Explain."

His heart was pounding in his ears. The fact that she would even entertain the possibility that he had a valid reason said a lot about her. Affirmed his beliefs.

Don't screw this up, Shepard.

"The short version is that when I was 'repaired' by Cerberus, they had to do some things to my mind in order to recover it fully. It impacted my long term memory in such a way that remembering my past was literally draining energy from the cybernetic eyes they implanted."

A trace of curiosity filtered through the quarian engineer's anger. "How?"

He shrugged. "Miranda could explain a lot better. But essentially breaking down those mental barriers caused an imbalance in power distribution. Over time, things adapted to work better together. And I've worn down most of the...crystallization, she called it."

Tali was unmoved. "Yet you said nothing."

He winced slightly. "You're right, I've owed you this for a long time. I would do anything to correct that mistake. But it's done. Tali...this is hard for me to remember. I still have nightmares about what happened, still feel..." he paused, wiping the back of his hand across his damp forehead. His hand trembled slightly as he looked at the perspiration. Sinking back into the chair, he met her gaze with resignation. "I'd understand if you just turned around and left. But I'll make one more selfish request, Tali'Zorah. Hear me out. Hear me out, and then decide."

Time seemed to stand still as he watched her consider. She _had_ to listen. If she didn't...would it be over? It might already be over between them, whether she stayed or not. He tried not to think about their time together only hours before. All of their time together, from the first time he had laid eyes on her on the Citadel. Could all of that be destroyed in an instant? Could what happened at Sambhavita ruin his life all over again?

"Alright," she sighed loudly, "this is probably a mistake, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt."

He almost leaped from the chair. "Thank you-" he started as she walked across the deck towards him.

"Don't thank me yet," she snapped at him, "I'll listen. That's all."

He nodded quickly as she leaned against the console, keeping her distance. "That's all I'm asking."

Tali crossed her arms and looked at him, waiting. She _was_ listening, but her posture suggested that she didn't expect much. He ran his hand over his head again and cleared his throat nervously.

"Might as well start at the beginning."

* * *

He didn't think he would ever get used to reentry.

Shepard gripped the armrests of the hard, narrow seat with white-knuckled intensity as the shuttlecraft was buffeted in the upper atmosphere. The windowless passenger cabin was empty aside from himself although he could see the pilot up front. The man had said nothing to Shepard as he entered the craft, and scarcely acknowledged his existence. He was calmly flipping overhead switches as they descended and the cherry glow faded from the windscreen. Occasionally he was muttering something to ground control. Shepard tried to relax - if the pilot wasn't worried, there was probably nothing to fear.

He took deep breaths as the ride smoothed out. A carpet of pink-hued clouds was visible through the screen before the shuttle punched into them and the bouncing resumed with a passion. The seats shook and rattled, and the restraints cut into his shoulders. The windscreen was a featureless gray punctuated by random flashes - Shepard recalled that this was lightning, a feature of atmospheric storms. He had seen it before from the ground...never flown in it. The pilot seemed to wrestle with the controls, and his voice rose enough speaking to control that he occasionally heard it through the overall din. A cluster of telltales flashed amber and the pilot slapped at a bank of nearby toggles causing them to darken again. As his panic surfaced again he wondered just how many atmospheric hours this pilot had under his belt.

In less than a minute, although it felt far longer to him at the time, the shuttle descended beneath the clouds and emerged into a downpour. Through the sheets of rain Shepard glimpsed dense jungle lit garishly red in the dim light that filtered through the clouds. The pilot input some commands into the control console and the rain seemed to vanish, replaced by a false-color image and a superimposed glide path. They flew on until they reached a wide clearing. Shepard craned his neck to see more out the front of the craft - where were the buildings? The shuttle slowly descended until he felt the landing skids touch the ground. When it had settled to rest, it wasn't sitting quite level. The shuttle was still powered up as the pilot finally looked back at him, eyes concealed behind a dark visor, and jerked his head towards the hatch. The message was clear: get out. He forced a pleasant smile, barely managing to hold his temper.

"One moment, sir."

Deliberately, he unfastened the harness and smoothed his uniform before standing and retrieving his duffel from the overhead. He swung the bag to the floor with a soft thud, and savored the pilot's growing irritation as he calmly opened the bag and found the gray Alliance-issue poncho. Withdrew it. Unfolded it. Put it on, slowly. And finally gestured to the hatch with obviously feigned deference. The pilot slammed the button wordlessly with his fist. Shepard was nearly knocked onto his back by the wall of hot, humid air outside as he walked casually down the ramp in the pouring rain. He almost tripped as the pilot began to close the hatch before his foot had left the ramp. He turned as he stumbled, cursing as the shuttle rocked back and forth into the air with a whining roar. He jogged away from the craft, but the pilot swung out over his head as he began his ascent, blowing his hood back and causing him to get drenched.

"Asshole!" he shouted at the retreating shuttle, which rocked its wings in mock salute before disappearing into the clouds. Pulling the hood back up, he looked around. Tall trees that looked like Palm trees but had broader leaves surrounded the clearing, which was scorched and misshapen at its center from frequent shuttle landings. There was a rutted gravel road leading into a dense canopy of forest, but nobody in sight. After spinning around looking for his pickup in frustration, he dropped the duffel to the ground with a splash and rested atop it as the wind whipped rain into the poncho and lightning flashed in the bizarre pink clouds.

He had dozed off in the cacophony of the storm - a skill all soldiers seemed to possess - when the the sound of crunching gravel accompanied by an electrical whine woke him. He sat up and squinted into the dark forest road. A pair of headlights was bouncing towards him. They emerged into the clearing attached to a wheeled ground vehicle of indeterminate color - the red tint to everything eventually seemed colorless to his eyes, rendering the world in grays. He waved and picked up his bag. When the vehicle stopped short in front of him, he jogged over to open the door and climbed in.

He tossed the duffel over the seat. "What took-" he began angrily - and stopped with his mouth hanging open. The driver, a heavyset man with a clean shaven face, looked at him with a bored expression. He was in full combat gear. Helmet. Impact armor. Auxiliary shield generator. Weapon armed and in its receiver. Frags and smokers on his belt. They regarded each other silently for some seconds, the driver with his armored hands on the wheel, Shepard sitting in a slowly expanding puddle of rainwater.

"Uh...are you expecting trouble?" he asked incredulously.

The driver smiled at that. "Nah. Regulations. Just you? No cargo - mail? Nothing?"

Shepard shook his head and began to pull off the poncho. It was stifling in the cab and the material didn't breathe. "Regulations?" he managed in a muffled voice as the driver turned the vehicle around.

He snorted. "Yeah. Ol' Commander Four-Square..." his voice trailed off as he saw the bars on Shepard's damp uniform. "Shit," he mumbled before hastily adding "sir."

Shepard laughed. "Forget it. I know you don't get a lot of officers here. But...you must tell me, Four-Square?"

The man looked miserable, and stared out the windshield as the truck bounced along the rough gravel road. He thought he wasn't going to answer at first, but he eventually smirked and turned an eye on him.

"Well, the garrison commander is a bit of a stickler for the rules y'see. Everything by the numbers. Former supply rat. Sir." He raised an eyebrow, indicating that the information given should be enough, and turned his full attention back to the road. Shepard thought about it.

"No, I don't get it. I'm sorry, private..."

The man sighed. "Private Rollins, sir. Uh...sir, I'm not really sure I should say anything. I mean, you're an officer an' all." Apparently Rollins was reconsidering as he dug himself deeper.

"Please. I insist."

As in: I could order you to tell me. Rollins simply shrugged. "Ok. Well, I said he does everything by the numbers. This guy won't bend a rule to save his own mother. You go by The Book, all the time, no exceptions."

Shepard nodded. "And?"

Rollins looked uncomfortable again with the degree of explanation necessary. "Uh...so you get your standard one set of BDUs issued. You get your flashlight, one, serial number on file. Your weapon. Two magazines. Your contraceptives - he insists we take 'em, although what we're going to do with 'em out here, I have no clue. I've been on this rock two years, still have my original issue."

"This is a colony, isn't it? There are women."

He shrugged. "You'll have to meet him, sir. This place is different."

"And Four-Square?" he asked in exasperation.

"Ah. Sorry sir. And you get your ration of toilet tissue, based on what The Book says an average soldier uses in a day."

"...four squares."

"You got it, sir." He was grinning now. "Four squares."

He had to laugh at that. "Thank you, private. My lips are sealed."

"Thank _you_ for that, sir."

"Does this thing have air-con? It's damned hot in here."

He actually looked upset to be reminded of it. "No can do, sir. Charge is too low. Barely got enough juice to make it back to base."

Shepard turned in his seat to give Rollins a surprised look. "You don't keep the vehicles charged?"

"The receiver doesn't work well in the rain, sir. We're a bit low on transport at the moment...that's why I took so long to get out here, sorry about that."

"But the briefing I read says that it rains here all the time."

Rollins nodded, spinning the wheel to veer around a particularly nasty pothole. "That's correct sir. More often than not."

He was silent for a time, bouncing around on the seat in the sauna-like cab, slowly being steamed in his own sweat.

"You know, that seems like a pretty stupid problem to have."

Rollins snorted. "Sir, you're going to wear that phrase out real fast around here."

* * *

After another twenty or so minutes of bone-jarring progress down the road, Shepard finally lay eyes on his new home. It was dominated by a large microwave receiver aimed up into the sky. Clustered in an area nearby were two low barracks buildings, a warehouse, vehicle depot, some other facilities of unknown function, and an enormous bank of batteries. Putting the base right next to the receiver necessitated the long drive from the landing site - for obvious reasons, it wasn't smart to fly in the vicinity of where a solar power station was directing its energy. Another problem that seemed easily avoidable with the smallest amount of forethought. The base was fenced in, topped with razor wire and probably augmented with barrier fields. A gravel road led elsewhere - why didn't they pave anything? - presumably to the colony itself.

Four-Square, or more properly Commander Benoit, had predictably stationed himself in the warehouse. Rollins dropped him out front and departed towards the depot with a wave. He hadn't seen any other troopers, but it was considered to be the weekend so many of them would be off the base. He stepped inside after shaking off as much water as he could beneath the overhang. There were hooks for the ponchos, one of which was occupied. It was a marvel. It was hung in such a way that it appeared to have been pressed. There wasn't a drop of water beneath it. Shaking his head, he hung his own poncho with considerably less care, water dripping onto the linoleum floor. There was only one office, the rest of the building being dedicated to the warehouse proper. He rapped smartly on the door and waited.

"Enter," said a tired voice. He stiffened to attention and opened the door with military precision.

And stepped into something out of a drill sergeant's fantasies.

After the red-tinged outdoors, the color in the room revealed by the fluorescents was almost jarring. A black bordered unit banner with forest green background hung centered on the wall without as much as a single sag or wrinkle, every tassel absolutely uniform in appearance. "SAMBHAVITA - M.G. 1ST BATTALION" was printed in golden block lettering beneath a simple forked red lightning emblem circled in white. As seemed ubiquitous with most units deployed beyond the Local Cluster, the banner featured a generic starfield and abstract planetary ring around its emblem.

The desk was placed squarely in the center of the room towards the back wall. Two black ballpoint pens - standard issue, a design unchanged for centuries - stood at attention in a cream-colored office supply holder, which also had what appeared to be _exactly_ twenty-five paper clips, five binder clips, and a stapler with an unopened box of staples next to it in its designated spot. The desk was otherwise clear except for a blotter which had a data slate resting atop it. Keeping his head motionless, he glanced around the office and found all the military issued equipment exactly where it should be - and not one solitary personal item. He swallowed. Benoit didn't look up from the slate.

"Second Lieutenant Shepard, reporting as ordered, sir." He stood rigidly exactly two paces from the desk. Benoit was still scrolling through data on his slate. The rain pattered against the window, and the overhead lights buzzed - there was no other sound. He felt sweat trickling down his back. Perhaps five minutes had passed when Benoit finally looked up.

The man had an emaciated look, with sunken cheeks and a carefully groomed mustache that seemed ripped right out of the hygiene regs. Sandy hair was combed over an expansive bald spot. Accompanied with his gray pallor - he had noticed a similar coloration with Rollins, or at least thought he did in the odd light - it should have made him look weaselly. But he was startled by the heat that seemed to radiate from his calculating stare.

"Second Lieutenant Shepard, formerly just Lieutenant Shepard before you were busted two ranks - frankly, I'm surprised to see you here," he said in a soft voice.

His back ached, the gravity was a little higher here than he was used to. Spacers normally used three-quarter gravity, Alliance ships a full gravity...this was somewhat more. But he hadn't been put at ease.

"Sir?" he asked, not sure how else to respond.

"I mean that you should have been court martialed. You should either be in a brig somewhere or made a civilian outright."

Shepard clamped his jaw shut angrily. The gaunt officer leaned back in his chair.

"I see. I wonder, do you even know why you are here?"

He felt it would be unwise to answer. This was probably the same canned crap that he fed everybody that came through. Never interrupt a senior officer's speech.

Benoit lifted the data pad, studied it. "Let's see. Exemplary training record. Initial assignments, perfect. Then - ah. Insubordination, your first. A week's pay, a slap on the wrist." He looked up at Shepard. "Am I boring you, perhaps, Second Lieutenant?"

Whatever. He was going to hear it all repeated anyway. Benoit smiled up at him. It was not amusement.

"But it gets better. More insubordination..." he waved his hand dismissively as he looked over his file. "Then I see...friction between you and our alien allies develop. More than a little. More like at every opportunity."

He glanced over the top of the slate. Shepard carefully remained at attention. Benoit shrugged, as if expecting something more, and continued.

"You threatened a salarian cadet with...the removal of his sexual organs, to paraphrase a bit, if he kept taking photographs on an Alliance vessel on which, I should note, he was a registered observer." He scrolled farther, and raised an eyebrow. "You almost came to blows with a quarian subcontractor on _Yorktown_ when you believed he had completed his work, quote, 'too quickly' to have possibly done it properly. Subsequent investigation revealed that you were incorrect. These are just a few examples out of many."

Shepard felt his hand twitch. He stared at Benoit's placid face across the desk, trying to burn holes in his forehead with his eyes. Benoit only smiled more widely.

"Finally, to top it all off, you struck a turian officer full in the face aboard _Victory_, in view of senior bridge officers and press corps, because you feel he slighted the Alliance - something only you claim to have heard." He tossed the slate onto the desk with a clatter and returned Shepard's stare. "You're lucky to be alive, after that. He held back his security detachment and for whatever reason - although I think we know what _that_ is, don't we? - he didn't make it into a full-blown diplomatic incident. The footage was confiscated, an 'eyes only' entry was added to your personal file...and here you are." He sat back with a satisfied expression.

"Permission to speak, sir?" he grated.

"Denied," Benoit answered, sitting with his hands folded on the desk. "You're here, Second Lieutenant, because your mother has pull. Before you say anything and get my boot up your ass, I know she didn't act directly on your behalf. Unlike you, she is an outstanding officer. But there was concern that she _would_ act to save your sorry hide if you were drummed out or court martialed."

Benoit stood up and planted his hands on the desk, leaning towards Shepard aggressively. His uniform was immaculate, the red lightning emblem on his sleeve so vibrantly pristine it seemed to glow. Shepard struggled to maintain his composure. He wanted to scream at Benoit, attack him. Knock over his damned office supply caddy.

"This is where careers go to die, Shepard. The guys cleaning junk out of low Earth orbit make jokes about you. You can think there's a chance for redemption if you want to, I don't care - but you're going to find that when your contract is up, it won't be renewed. You're not going to find any friends farther up the ladder, either. You're _done_."

Somehow the reality of it hadn't registered until that moment. He was a total screwup. He was being allowed to finish his enlistment because it could harm his _mother's_ career.

Benoit took his seat behind the bare desk again, smoothing his uniform carefully as he sat down. He looked up at Shepard as if they had been discussing the weather.

"Rules. Don't break any. If you so much as cause a foul odor in the head without filling out the proper paperwork, I'll have you on the first tramp freighter with marginally breathable atmo out of here - so fast it'll make your empty head spin." He paused, relishing what came next. "Some _other_ rules. No fraternization - period. No passes off base - period. We have one asari scientist on the base, part of the terraforming team trying to fix this hellhole. I don't guess it'll be a problem for you, given your storied past, but don't even _think_ about it. If I have to explain that, you're even more dense than I thought."

Shepard stared blankly at a point just above Benoit's head, suddenly feeling queasy. Benoit was tapping at the slate.

"You'll replace the Second in Delta Company. The brass terminated his contract early, just for you. That makes you _special_. It'll really endear you to the men." He smirked. "Senior is Lieutenant Rainey. That's full Lieutenant, by the way. You'll get along fine, he's a real disaster in uniform." He gestured towards the door with an open hand. "You've got paperwork to fill out. You'll find an NCO in the warehouse with your gear and the requisite forms. You may go, Second Lieutenant."

For a moment, Shepard maintained his stance at attention. It was going to be a long two years. He couldn't help himself.

"Why are _you_ here, sir?"

Benoit looked sharply up at him from the slate. He felt a cold sweat break out - technically, he had just violated protocol. As Benoit smiled up at him again, though, he knew that he had been waiting for the question.

"I follow the rules. Seven years ago, I followed the rules precisely - filed away something that nobody wanted filed. Tagged it, indexed it. The brass weren't happy when someone dug it up. They sent me here, and I filed every appeal and request for extension in existence, forms so old they had to go into the archives to process them. Never made a mistake, and they were looking to get me out. Dotted every 'i' and crossed every 't'. Stayed here long enough that I became senior - and then we both discovered something."

The smile widened, revealing perfect white teeth, and Shepard saw something in Benoit's eyes that was actually frightening as he gave voice to it.

"I was a natural for this job. Getting hold of screwups like you that think they can game the system, and crushing them. I'm here because I _love_ it, Shepard."

At that moment, the ground shook and Shepard stumbled backward, catching himself against the wall as the lights blinked out. His heart was racing - what was that? Benoit didn't even blink as he returned his attention to his slate in the dim red light filtering through the window.

"Welcome to Merlin, Second Lieutenant. Now get the hell out of my office."


	2. Chapter 2

"Wait, stop right there," Tali interrupted, raising her hand, "Merlin? No - first, you're a...xenophobe?" She had avoided the more harsh terms - racist, bigot - but couldn't hide the disbelief and thinly masked disgust in her voice. "I guess you have more in common with Cerberus than I thought."

Shepard was silent for a moment, but she noticed the brief _"this again?"_ flick of his eyes to the side.

"Tali," he sighed in exasperation, "you know I'm not like that anymore!" He shook his head. "This is exactly where I didn't want to go. It's not the core issue here."

Such a petulant tone from her commander struck Tali mute for a moment. What was he, a child caught in a lie? Admittedly, she had not pressed him very hard on his past. On a couple occasions she had attempted to broach the topic with him when he seemed to be in a good mood. But in response to her tentative questioning, he would quickly change the subject, waving her off. She had been more insistent with him once, lying in his arms before the nearly fatal trip through the Omega Four relay. He had still managed to avoid it.

"It's not important, not now," he had muttered, turning away from her embrace to stare at the ceiling. She sat up to look down at him, just managing to hold back a delighted laugh from the simple pleasure of the satin sheets flowing against her skin. The euphoria was short-lived as the fear and apprehension clear on her lover's face sent a wave of uneasiness through her, like a drive core resonating just a little too long after a jump. His thoughts seemed focused elsewhere as he continued absently. "Maybe...when this is over. Some other time, Tali." He turned back, seeming to return to himself and smiling impishly as he reached out to her. "I'd rather focus on the moment."

His distant words then had left a flaw in the memory, a subtle blemish on what she held closest to her heart. What he had revealed to her now had reopened the wound and brought the latent suspicion back to the surface. She thought of his kind words to her...he didn't want anyone else...he would wait for her...only if it's safe. She recalled that similar words had been whispered to her before. Her jaw clenched as the dim gray memory of that man reasserted itself, his bright eyes gleaming cruelly from behind the visor.

Prazza.

Shepard tensely waited a couple of seconds for Tali to respond, unaware of the machinations of her mind, and when she remained silent quickly attempted to move on.

"S-so...Merlin, right?" He turned back to the console, and with a few hurried movements focused the display onto the large gas giant. "This is Pivot. It's tidally locked to Sambhavita, about two-tenths AU from prime, and the colony itself is located on..." a few more taps at the console, and a streaked orb that looked like a bloody pearl hung in the air. "...Merlin, the largest moon orbiting about Pivot. It's-"

"You're not changing the subject on me this time, Commander."

Her barely audible statement seemed to cool the room by several degrees. The man she had considered as more honorable, more trustworthy and selfless than any other turned slowly back to her in the helmsman's chair. His outline seemed to shimmer and tremble, threatening to vanish or explode at any moment.

"Alright," he said carefully, "things were different then. I was different - stupid, even - then. Here I am, now..." he spread his arms, as if inviting inspection. "You've seen what I am now. No need to dredge up what I did barely out of OCS. You know me, Tali. Better than anyone."

She struggled to maintain her composure, trying to believe he would open up to her. "I certainly thought I knew you. I'm a little...surprised the Council accepted you as a Spectre with that kind of background."

Shepard looked uncomfortable, shifting nervously in the chair. "Well, actually-"

"They didn't know, either." Her voice was scarcely a whisper.

Her commander grimaced, shrugging irritably. "It wasn't disclosed. That was out of my hands. A lot of things were buried after Sambhavita."

She mirrored his dismissive gesture mockingly, scarcely able to see straight. "Not your fault!" she spat, "Is that your excuse for everything?"

He bit his lip, running his hand over the stubble on his head in a familiar sign of stress. "Look, you know - I wanted to talk about this, but not to just dwell on my past opinions of alien races, all of which I see now are perfectly wonderful. Especially quarians." He smiled tentatively at her.

"I need to understand you, Shepard," she pleaded, gesturing with her arms and ignoring his feeble attempt at levity. "Why is this so hard? You said that you _wanted_ to tell me."

"Damn it, about what happened on Merlin! This...it's not..." He paused, appraising her with a puzzled look on his face. "Wait, if this is about me and the Council, need I remind you that _certain_ members of the Council were looking for any reason to avoid naming me the first human Spectre?"

He thinks this is about the Council?

"...that was behind me, in the past. The crisis..."

The _Council_?

Tali sniffed derisively, stopping his oblivious monologue. "Oh, so nobody holds the geth against my people anymore? How nice."

That seemed to knock him back on his heels for a moment. Shepard straightened in the chair, taut as Tali stared levelly at him with her arms firmly crossed. "T-that's-"

"What? 'That's different', is that _really_ what you were going to say?" Tali laughed harshly, tossing her head. "I'm just trying to point out that some things-"

She stopped as the room seemed to swim in front of her eyes, and the nutrient paste she had ingested earlier threatened to come back up. The flavorless Cerberus glop brought her to the sudden realization of how much she missed the flavorful, spicy food served back at the Flotilla. How she had lost the camaraderie with her brethren, who all understood what it was to be trapped inside a suit their entire lives. In her love for Shepard, her belief in him, she had given up everything, risking her very life to be with him.

The Normandy abruptly seemed sterile and impersonal. A technical marvel, yes, but everything was so...perfect. None of the hatches in the deck had to be bumped _just so_ to release all the way. The regulation block lettering plastered everywhere didn't lend the same personality to the ship as the beautiful, flowing script lovingly hand-painted - again and again, over the decades - on hazed windows and well-worn bulkheads. Crew were family. _Ships_ were family. And there was a phrase in which that family was embodied, symbolizing it and the bond shared among the quarian people.

_No secrets between shipmates._

"...Tali?" Shepard prompted nervously as she returned to herself.

Looking at the glowing hologram of the ship back towards the lift, she spoke quietly. "Maybe...this was a mistake."

Leaning back in the chair slowly, her commander seemed surprised but obviously relieved at the prospect of temporarily closing Pandora's Box. The red sphere of Merlin still hung in the air behind the headrest, staring silently at them both like a warning. "You might be right. I think maybe if we came back to it another time..." his voice trailed off as she turned back to face him, a baleful glare he hadn't seen since the disaster on Freedom's Progress emanating from behind the visor. Shepard's eyes grew large as he finally seemed to register her distress. "Hey. Tali. What's...?"

"You're not hearing me," she growled, dismissing him with a flick of her hand, "you don't get it." The thing in front of her shimmered and distorted in the amber glare of the displays until it was unrecognizable...she didn't know this man. She shook her head violently, squeezing her eyes shut, the molten glow of cybernetic eyes in the dark imposed on the afterimage from her memories - with the remembered grip of the knife in her hand. She wouldn't cry for this, for him, not again. As she blinked the wetness away she saw him clearly. A confused, uncertain Shepard, staring at her uncomprehending. Calm returned to her. Certainty.

"This is pointless," she muttered, as much to herself as for Shepard's benefit. With that she pushed off from the console she had been leaning against and walked away towards the lift. Her footsteps echoed across the empty deck as her commander, her captain, didn't attempt to stop her. She halted in front of the lift, waiting as the doors slid open with utter precision, the minute voltage fluctuations in the current compensated for flawlessly by EDI's omnipotent control of the ship's systems. She stepped inside. The doors closed, and the deck was silent again except for the ever present hum of electronics.

Tali never saw the shock on Shepard's face, gone white as the SR2 designation on the hull. Or the way his hands started to shake as he slowly lowered his head into them.

* * *

After standing rigidly in the center of the lift fuming for an undetermined period of time, Tali unclenched her fists and roughly smacked the glowing emblem for engineering deck. She was furious. He hadn't even attempted to stop her, and her last image of him burned into her mind - Shepard staring up at her as if she had said something completely idiotic. What was so damned difficult about telling the _truth_? In her agitation, she shoved past the lift doors almost before they opened and stalked briskly to the core, locking the doors behind with her OT. She didn't want to deal with Grunt, who she had seen out of the corner of her eye as she exited. Shepard had the authorization to override the security but he wouldn't dare. She needed to be alone as the bright energy of her anger burned off. She needed to think.

Engineering control was blessedly empty as the crew were still down on the surface. The rhythmic hum of the core began to work at the edges of her agitation, slowly calming her down as she walked down the brightly lit corridor to her station. She planted her hands on either side of the illuminated console as she came to it, leaning forward to catch her breath. Quarians, so dependent on technology for survival, often sought refuge in the familiarity of the systems they knew best. Even her sleeping berth was here, at least before-

Tali bowed her head over the input panel, taking a deep breath and holding it as the unwanted feelings surged against her agitation and confusion about her encounter with Shepard.

She could leave the ship.

Easy enough, as she simply wore most of her possessions. Nobody could stop her from leaving, no obligations or contracts. Certainly she would stand out on the human colony, but she should be able to obtain transport back to the Flotilla or at least somewhere that wasn't _here_. She had accumulated an appreciable sum of credits.

"Tali, they aren't dirty. They aren't going to invade the Fleet. Credits are credits...please take them," Shepard urged her when she had refused to accept any payment from Cerberus for working with him. He had smiled at her, that gentle reassuring smile. "With any luck you can use them to purchase parts and supplies, if that's really what you want. Pilgrimage round two. I insist."

Her eyes were damp again. Damn him! Tears shed while in the confines of her suit were a messy business. Her nose could start running, and anyway it made her skin feel funny until she was able to uncover herself and clean up properly. Often she just had to deal with the itchy dryness for days. Not something she particularly wanted to deal with at the moment. Blinking the tears away, she objectively considered - at least, she tried to - leaving the Normandy and Shepard behind.

But maybe she was overreacting. He had been about to tell her...no. It was a lie of omission. Sighing softly, she straightened and crossed her arms, distractedly watching the status telltales scroll slowly upward on the display, all of them green. If anything should have been of concern, it probably should be the fact that he was somehow involved with the event that had come to define an otherwise unremarkable system - Vishnu's Folly. That was present in the back of her mind, but Tali's main concern was the statements he had made almost in passing about the reasons for his being stationed there. His reasons for being demoted...his interactions with other races.

Quarians dealt with prejudice and outright discrimination whenever they left the Flotilla almost as a matter of routine. Bright eyed young adults, resplendent in their newly gifted suits, were told in matter-of-fact tones what to expect as they were sent off on pilgrimage. They would be treated variously as vermin, beggars, and thieves. At best they might be considered automatons, valued for being skilled in their tasks but left aside from anything not related to their work. Even among those that were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, most found quarians to be ciphers, inscrutable behind their crystalline face shields. Do your best, they were told. But be wary, stay safe, and lower your expectations of others. Find something and come back soon to be welcomed into the fold by those that understand you. As they streamed away from the bosom of the Fleet into the larger universe, those eyes were not so bright as before.

Tears finally streamed silently down her face to be reclaimed by the hydration subsystem in her envirosuit. It hurt her deeply to think of Shepard as someone who could _ever_ have felt that way. Again she remembered their first encounter in one of the less palatable sectors of the Citadel. She had been near panic, kicking herself for becoming ensnared in such a situation, for being too trusting - when a slug suddenly caught her turian aggressor in the shoulder, knocking him back and twisting his upper body away from her. She frantically turned to see who had fired, half-expecting some rival gang...but it was a stranger wearing Alliance armor charging down the stairwell, firing with grim accuracy at the other thugs surrounding her.

It was true that he had actually been after the information she possessed and it was no chance meeting. And yet, he could have allowed Fist's men to kill her and waited for a safer opportunity to steal the data back from them. When the shootout was over, that smile...was she alright? Flustered and surprised that he even cared, she had responded defensively, that she could have handled it.

It wasn't true. He had saved her life, the first of many times that would happen.

There was a crack in her perception of Commander Shepard now, the image of him that she had held in her heart for so long as some sort of white knight, an infallible paragon, lost forever. She had known he wasn't perfect. Keelah, she knew. But this...what if they had met instead on board _Victory_ or _Yorktown_? What if _that_ man had come down the stairs on the Citadel on that fateful day? Would he have stayed in cover and simply let her die? Shepard discounting her presence as a tool to keep the engines running smoothly. Shepard believing her pilgrimage to be some kind of gang initiation, to steal something valuable to bring back to her rag-tag Fleet. Shepard thinking of her as a worthless parasite. It hurt.

But the truth of the matter was, she reflected, that he had done none of those things. He _had_ saved her that day. Not once had there been a hint of bias in his actions. In fact Shepard often went out of his way, even against the advice of others, to accept and accommodate non-humans on his team. That was why it was such a surprise to her.

"Bosh'tet," Tali whispered to herself, rocking lightly from side to side on her feet. She needed to know more. The urge to flee the ship had become something to be considered rather than to be acted on immediately. Where to start...

Interfacing her OT with the workstation, she dug into her personal archive and retrieved a double-encrypted file. Sensing her biometrics, that she was alive and not under duress, it automatically decoded onto the screen - Shepard's Alliance service record.

The record appeared on-screen, a warning flashing at the top indicating it was two years, three-hundred twelve days out of date. It wasn't something she was even supposed to have...Alliance computers weren't easy to break, and they tracked down crackers with a religious fervor. But was it her fault if a navigator's mate left his terminal unlocked when she asked him for a printout of the sector map? She smiled to herself. It was a fact of life on a military vessel far from the docks that a young woman with a form-fitting uniform and a sultry voice could make the men dance. Even a quarian.

She started at the beginning...academy...shakedown cruise...a stint rehabbing old recyclers at a relay garrison. She moved down further past the training runs and convoy escort assignments, where more often than not 'Comm Tech II' trailed after his rank. Her heart skipped a beat. It was there - _Yorktown_. Checking the dates, he had only served on the vessel for three weeks before being put ashore. A bit farther down the list, after a number of other ships where the longest stay was a month and a half, was _Victory_ where he was listed for three years. Her eyes widened. That was a very long tour for a young officer, particularly since she now knew he had been kicked off the ship and nearly out of the military itself. There were neither notations of disciplinary action anywhere nor reduction in rank. There was no mention of Sambhavita or Merlin in the record...but there _was_ another oddity. He had skipped a rank, going from lieutenant directly to commander on Elysium. She knew the tale of that colony well enough. It was there the commendations started, culminating in his ultimate status as a Council Spectre.

She stared at the amber text hovering in front of her. It didn't seem to correspond with the way the Alliance operated. Like any military organization, some heredity crept in here and there...but from what Shepard had told her, it was a meritocracy from top to bottom.

"From lieutenant, to washed-out second lieutenant, to _commander_ and war hero..." she muttered to herself, "...and none of it on record. Something's not right."

She made a slashing motion over the OT, and the record seemed to dissipate into the air as it closed the file and overwrote the active memory with random garbage. She stood with her hands on her hips, considering what to do next. _After all, you only heard what grew out of the official version of events._ Her head snapped up.

"EDI, news summary, subject 'Vishnu's Folly'."

"Affirmative Tali'Zorah. Search complete. Would you like the information sent to your station?"

"Vocalize it, please."

"Affirmative. Summary begins:"

_Vishnu's Folly is the colloquial name for the attack which took place in standard year 2175 on colony Merlin, Sambhavita, Ismar Frontier. Alliance Command states that unknown batarian pirates attacked the colony with overwhelming force, using orbital bombardment to destroy the main settlement 'Storm's Edge' after looting the colony and rounding up most colonists for the slave trade. The founding corporation, Consolidated Resources, was reluctant to provide funding for an early warning net, thus __the Alliance garrison was caught off guard. Its main outpost was wiped out by an early precision kinetic strike resulting in ninety percent casualties..._

Tali gasped in disbelief. Ninety percent? She hadn't heard it was that bad.

_...Alliance soldiers surviving the bombardment evacuated as many colonists as possible and fled to an unpopulated part of the colony, awaiting pickup underground. Due to miscommunication, they waited nearly two months with limited supplies and no power. Some two-hundred colonists survived along with twenty-three Alliance soldiers. Lieutenant Bradley Rainey was posthumously promoted to lieutenant commander and awarded the Silver Star for uncommon valor in his efforts to save the colonists. Subsequent investigation and stockholder revolt resulted in the firing and criminal trial of CEO Vishnu Ganapathy of Consolidated Resources, and the eventual liquidation of the Chennai-based company's remaining assets in 2177. Alliance Command issued a formal complaint to the Batarian Hegemony in 2178 at the conclusion of its own internal investigation, briefly bringing the issue back to the forefront. No further response from the Hegemony was received._

"Summary ends."

As EDI's voice echoed into silence, Tali couldn't help wringing her hands as the shock wore off. Shepard said it was actually worse?

"EDI," she called in shaky voice, "show me Merlin, Sambhavita system."

The cloud-blanketed world seemed to materialize in front of her, casting a red glare on everything in the room. Little white points of light representing the communications net moved about in intricate crisscrossed orbits. She had to admit feeling a little surprised at the amount of data Cerberus had on the system. Then again, with the Illusive Man...she tapped at the console, bringing up the statistics for the world. Beneath a large blinking 'Depleted' notice, it was no longer listed as a corporate world but rather as an Alliance protectorate. Skipping useless information like mass, orbital radius, axial tilt...there.

_Population: 0/unknown (abandoned)_

After letting the figure sink in for a few moments, she entered a quick chain of commands which caused the clouds to vanish and the coloration to switch from its red glow to something more yellow-orange. The surface was revealed to be mostly water, with a few large islands situated south of the equator. As the largest of these rotated into view, a green dot with the label 'STORM'S EDGE' appeared on the southwestern coastline. She attempted to zoom in closer, but this only resulted in a soft chime and the message 'No higher resolution available' to be superimposed on the image. Cursing softly she killed the display.

"EDI, are there any records available on the attack aside from public news accounts?"

"Search complete. No, Tali'Zorah. There are none in any authorized databases."

"_Authorized_ databases?"

"Yes. You have access to most resources in my databanks, however certain of these are off limits except to command personnel."

"I'm command personnel."

"Correct. In engineering."

"Just to confirm, you can't even tell me _if_ this information is in the restricted databases or not, correct?"

"Correct."

She was momentarily at a loss, bouncing lightly on her toes. Despite all that had happened she did still enjoy a challenge.

Tali froze suddenly, holding her breath. There was a way, if she dared to try it.

"EDI..." she said in an oddly pitched voice, "...stop local monitoring. Security mode, personal level one."

"Affirmative. Logging you out."

She would swear that there was a note of irritation in the AI's voice. No matter. With EDI no longer 'present' in the room, only isolated listening devices keyed to specific phrases uttered in an emergency - things like a loudly shouted "Help!" or "This device is on fire" - or her leaving the room could bring it back. She didn't want there to be any record of what she was about to do. In fact, she wasn't truly sure she wanted to go through with it at all. But if she was to know...

It was decided. She stepped up to the station, gingerly reaching into a concealed slit in her suit at the wrist. With her fingers she carefully removed a thin silken cable from the hidden pocket, the end of which she plugged into the workstation. Smiling to herself, she remembered how Shepard had nearly evaded her detection using a similar technique as the ethereal interface of her OT came to life on her arm. It had definitely been difficult to spot his snooping, but as quarians tended to be quite familiar with technology others might consider antiquated, she had already been aware of what to look for. Indeed, she had later used the data from the attempt to improve her own methodology.

Her fingers raced over the OT's input panel as she opened hundreds of innocuous processes and sessions to systems all over the ship, daisy chaining from here to there, and back again, creating the impression she was running a research trawl and deep analysis of the port energy radiators.

Somewhere along the way, a process with an off-by-one error found some code that shouldn't have been there at the top of its stack and happily executed it, starting a daemon that opened a session to Miranda's private terminal (Tali of course having _nothing_ to do with this selection), and exploited an unpatched hole in her public shell access to relay to another private terminal. The terminal of one Commander Shepard.

The bits were scattered randomly to the different nodes in the network on their way back to her, and Tali waited patiently as the pathing solidified, bringing latency to usable levels. She swallowed and felt suddenly too warm inside her suit as she stared at the prompt anxiously. Despite its intricacy, this was probably only going to work once. She had used smaller-scale intrusions before, when she first came onto the Normandy. Mostly she verified that what Shepard and Miranda had told her about Shepard's 'rebirth' was true, and that Miranda, at least, did not believe that Shepard was being mind-controlled, actually finding her complaining about it in her personal logs. There were other things - some vids kept _very_ well hidden away in her personal archives, for instance - but when the holes began to be closed she immediately stopped her efforts. She didn't know who had found out that someone was digging where they weren't supposed to be, but she had a good idea. This she had saved for when she really needed it. As the immediate crisis with the collectors was over, for her that time was now.

It wouldn't be as simple as breaking into Miranda's terminal since Shepard was using some different software on the back-end that she was not familiar with. Still, having her own personal access to the system in his quarters she knew that the same applications ran there as anywhere else. And if he was hooked into the Ceberus encryption protocols...there was a chance of success. If not, this attempt would fail and likely cause local data destruction. Well, that's what backups were for. Her finger poised over the execute glyph. Simply asking him wouldn't get her the type of unfiltered information she was looking for if he would even speak of it again. Although her feelings about his secrecy were less certain than they had been before, she still felt that something had changed. Whether it was just another dimension of him to be explored or a reason to be apart, she did not yet know. But she wanted to find out.

She activated the glyph, and the carefully crafted package began to deploy to Shepard's terminal several decks above her.

Tali's OT was constantly analyzing its networked environment, and thousands of different counters and statistics for almost every operation stored huge volumes of raw data that could be processed later on a much more powerful machine, such as her station on the Normandy. This could take advantage of spare cycles all over the ship thanks to EDI's grid subsystem. Months of day to day activity, routine processes that she did in her work, were faithfully logged and analyzed daily by her collected scripts and toolkits - many she had written herself, others she had obtained through various means both illicit and otherwise. Some time ago while working to patch combat-damaged cabling, lying prone in one of the cramped belly passages of the ship, one of the daily runs alerted her to a growing possibility of an abnormality in the encryption framework used by Cerberus systems. She had been so excited that in an extremely rare occurrence, she did a hurried, half-assed job of repairing the cables with a mental promise to do the job later. To her credit, she did return before the end of the shift to complete the repairs.

What she had found when she rushed back to her station in her filth-streaked envirosuit, drawing curious stares from the crew as she passed, was a subtle flaw in the way the system handled passphrase entry. It used a one-time key generated by the user's OT, which was in turn secured via biometric authentication so that it could only be used by its owner. This key was valid for only a split second as it was automatically sent down the network by the OT when generated. Guessing it was basically impossible due to the length of the key and failure lockouts in place. In practice and in theory, it was a remarkably secure system. But not a perfect system.

Tali had uncovered a very slight lag in the key entry. Essentially, when the key was sent, the authentication process began validating the key from receipt of the very first character, the logic being that if an obviously invalid character were entered, it would continue accepting input but ignore whatever was entered afterward. This caused lag after every character was sent down the line, lag that was missing in other encryption implementations that avoided the extra checks. The trick was to use network congestion notifications to fake out the remote end, 'bargaining' for more time to send the correct key along with bogus checksums. When a _valid_ character was entered, the delay was the tiniest bit longer as a buffer was allocated to receive the rest of the key...and there, a race condition in the routine could be exploited to inject even more code into the buffer, finally opening a priveleged session on the terminal.

...in theory.

The entire process took place in an instant, and she was logged into the terminal as Commander Shepard. She blinked, hardly believing it. How anticlimactic.

Tali stared hungrily at the trove of information. In that listing there, Cerberus plans and known locations of ships and bases that could be of great value to the Fleet. Here, a tree labeled "Alliance Intelligence Contacts." Another, "Reaper 1." So many possibilities, more and more as she moved about the interface. She wondered if this is what Kasumi felt. So much _data_! She could-

One of the entries stopped her as it seemed to leap out from the listing, chilling her to the core. It read simply, "Alenko, Kaidan - KIA." She realized with sudden shame that she had been ready to raid Shepard's most private memories without his knowledge. What she sought was already bad enough. Mentally she disregarded all the other entries and scanned for...there. "Alliance Career Data." It was a good thing that Shepard hadn't been too imaginative in naming these things. She opened it and quickly verified that it was the same as her own - no mention of Merlin, still the unexplained jump in rank. Closing it, she continued paging through the entries. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, with sub-trees scattered all over. Too many to scan visually, even offloading some of the character recognition to her visor. She tapped at the OT, filtering for 'Merlin.' The entire screen blanked. 'Vishnu.' Blank. 'Sambhavita.' Blank. What in the world...? Had he not even kept records himself?

"Not likely..." she whispered contemplatively. Shepard was meticulous about that sort of thing. Maybe it made some sense to use non-obvious key words to hide the data given its sensitivity, but what would he use? If she had to go digging, she would never have time to access all the files without being discovered. She tried 'Freedom's Progress.' Logs with appropriate date stamps popped onto the screen. She was rather curious about what could be in those...but she moved on. 'Haestrom.' More logs. So he was using tags that made sense for other things. She kept going. Benoit, Garrison, Batarian (which worked, but not what she was looking for), Pirates. Nothing. She squinted at the screen, frustrated. To break through so much security just to be thwarted by this? She began pacing in front of the console, adjusting the cowl over her helmet in agitation as she replayed their conversation in her mind as best she could, the thin cable streaming from her wrist chaining her to the task. She had been upset through most of it, but...

She stopped abruptly. Could it be? Quickly she strode back to the console, trying to steady her hands as she entered a new phrase.

'Delta Company.'

"Yes!" she shrieked, eyes glittering as the screen filled with listings. He always had put most of the focus on his crew, his team. "I'm glad some things haven't changed, Shepard," she laughed, grinning. The smile faded quickly as she considered what she might learn from the files. After hearing the news summary she wasn't sure if she wanted to know. Still, she opened the first log.

A man's upper body materialized in the air before her, illuminated by the harsh blue glow of fluorescents. It was a younger man, and she stared at him a moment, puzzled. Then her eyes opened wide as she realized what she was looking at was a younger version of Shepard. His face was as yet unlined with worry, without the scars that he had never seen fit to spend the resources on to have completely removed. The traces of gray were gone from thick hair parted neatly down the side rather than the buzz cut he now favored. Still with a shadow on his chin, she could see the potential for his easy going smile. But he was different in other more subtle ways. The eyes looked out at her in a hard stare that nearly made her flinch, seeming to brim with resentment and anger. His mouth was set in a thin line that promised no sympathy. A rumpled, dark gray Alliance uniform hung off him like an empty suit on a rack. But his shoulders were squared, and he faced the recorder at attention. The timestamp started counting from 19:00 hours as he began to speak.

"Duty log for Second LT Shepard, Delta Company, Merlin Garrison. Reported to Garrison Commander Benoit at approximately 14:00 hours..."

Tali started in surprise when she heard his voice. It was an oddly familiar accent but she couldn't immediately place it. She listened as he droned on about requisitions, bunk assignment, reporting to Lieutenant Rainey...and it finally clicked. There was a slight over-emphasis on enunciation, high and low tones, with an almost robotic cadence as he spoke. It was a spacer accent. Unusual, since most 'spacers' identifying as such had no discernible accent. Only families which had spent generations in space, confined to Sol system prior to first contact, talked like that. Radio communication was always a matter of life and death in space, even more so in the past before such luxuries as full-bandwidth ship-to-ship feeds with video and gigabits of data bandwidth. Spacers learned to talk in that fashion to help make sure that the message was received the _first_ time it was sent. Tali had this explained to her when the Flotilla had encountered a human-crewed tramp freighter surprisingly far out from normal trade routes. Something of a lost art now, but when she thought about it he had occasionally lapsed into a less pronounced version when comms were difficult. The man on the screen was still going on.

"...once the detail was complete, dismissed the men to quarters. End log."

The recording kept going, and she saw the man - Shepard, she had to remind herself - look nervously off to the side before continuing.

"Personal addendum," he muttered in a low voice she had to strain to hear, "the men do not seem to miss the former second as I was led to believe. I don't know if Benoit is just putting on a show, but so far, so good. Rainey seems almost a little _too_ happy to see me. I'm not sure what is going on there exactly but he let me take over the afternoon tasks without hesitation, I guess to get to know the men better." He shrugged exaggeratedly, a familiar gesture that made him seem more like Shepard. "This place doesn't seem too bad. I think Benoit could be full of shit."

He paused for a moment. The words that came next stung as if they were directed at her, like he was in the very room with her.

"Apparently, there's just the one asari bitch here. I've been told she basically operates the terraforming team single-handedly. That's just like them. Just like the 'new' Alliance," he growled, "all inclusive and whatever."

The look on his face was terrible to see, his lips curled into a snarl, brow furrowed in anger. She stared at him mutely, unable to look away as he destroyed the Shepard in her mind's eye.

"If it weren't for _them_ I wouldn't even _be_ here. I'd still-"

The scene abruptly rattled all over the place, the shadows on Shepard shifting wildly from the swinging overhead light. He swore, muttering something unintelligible as shouts could be heard outside the picture and the cracking sound of stressed metal echoed in the background. He stood and seemed to reach angrily towards her, and she jumped, stumbling back as the image disappeared. Tali lay her hand across her chest, gasping as her mind struggled to process what she had seen.

It wasn't that she had not seen Shepard angry before. There had been an ugly exchange of words on Freedom's Progress before they parted, for a start. When they had finally learned the scale of what the collectors had been doing with the captured colonists on their 'abandoned' ship, he had been driven onward by anger, nearly blinded by it. Garrus and Tali worked as a kind of tag-team to keep his emotions in check as he made choices on the basis of getting to the Omega Four relay as quickly as possible, steering him towards the kinds of decisions he would not regret in the future. There had been one particular incident...he had reacted rather strongly to the treatment a young quarian woman accused of pickpocketing had received at the hands of C-Sec, surprising even Tali with his outburst. She remembered grabbing onto his arm to hold him back from the startled officer. The look that was in his eyes as he spun around to face her, teeth bared, had made her let him go, raising her hands defensively.

"I've had enough of this shit!" he had shouted at her then. "Look at what we're doing - for _this_?"

It was impossible for her to reconcile what happened then with what she had seen on the screen moments before. The derision in his voice. The hatred in those eyes as he cut off the recorder, hatred for someone he had never met, only knowing she was not human. Impossible. That denial drove her to open the next file after some hesitation, rather than go with her first instinct to pilot the shuttle down to the surface and disappear in the population of the colony.

The next recording summarized the day, a sortie to change the guard at the outskirts of the settlement. Another personal log followed that.

"Foot patrol in this constant rain, with full gear, is ridiculous. Rollins says that they reserve the ground vehicles for longer trips to more remote monitoring stations further up the coast. I don't know, but ten klicks is a fair hike in this terrain. Orders are orders, so..." he scratched his head and looked pensive for a moment. "Saw Storm's Edge for the first time. It's a bunch of pre-fabs and shacks built from container scrap. Couldn't be more than twenty-thousand in the whole place, I thought, but apparently they are really packed in there. It's more like thirty-thousand."

Tali was tense, gripping the sides of the station with her hands. Was this really the same man from the day before? He seemed almost normal. Shepard darted his eyes to the side again, and continued in a lower voice.

"I don't get this place at all. Apparently the only real 'industry' is maintaining the terraforming equipment scattered on the surface. We have soldiers posted at monitoring stations that just watch readouts all day long. Consolidated bought the rights to this rock from the volus...got swindled, no surprise _there_. All the heavy metals they were after were concentrated on the surface, once those were gone...just a bunch of water and bad weather. What I don't get is...why are the colonists still here? The damn food is all imported, nothing grows here but those useless trees and that awful saw-edged grass. There is some scientific interest in the work the terraforming team is doing here, but it's...I mean, it's a corporation right? What's their interest in this place?"

Shepard reached for a hydration pack, taking a few quick swallows. She noticed his uniform was sweat-soaked beneath the arms and around the collar. Setting the pack aside, he stared down outside the field of view for a few moments before continuing.

"Additionally, we are only two understrength companies here. It's all rejects like...well, like me," he muttered, a brief spark of anger lighting in his eyes, "and lazy people with well-placed friends. I guess you couldn't really ask for a safer posting. The men say nothing ever happens here, the colony is at subsistence level - it's basically invisible. There is a real problem with discipline, I guess a bit rich coming from me." He smiled bitterly. "There are no NCOs to speak of, all the enlisted men are busted to private. The officers don't care. Rainey basically sits in the comms shack or plays cards at the motor pool all day, now that I'm here I do all the work. Thanks to Benoit nobody is breaking any rules, but they aren't exactly bending over backwards to be all that they can be." He smirked as if that was some kind of private joke, and switched off the recording.

There were no further personal entries for a while after that. Tali skimmed through over three months of duty logs, which were unbearably dry and repetitive. She did note one thing: it was draining him. The fire was gone from his eyes, and eventually she was only watching a tired man give terse summaries in dense military jargon before signing off. The fabric of his uniform had started to pill and fade, his skin began to pale, and he took less care of his appearance as time went on. His hair was sometimes unkempt, as if he had removed his helmet and sat right down. Once he actually read his report with his damp helmet and scuffed up armor still on. This was a very late return from a monitoring station far up the coast; the readout read 23:15. Whether it was the intended outcome or not, the Alliance was wearing Shepard down slowly but surely. She wondered at what might have happened if they had been entirely successful. But then...why weren't they? Only a couple months in and already such changes were visible. A few days later, though, things began to change - she could see that there were frequent personal logs after that time. She opened the first.

"...end duty log. Well, I- oh. Begin personal addendum." He smiled faintly at the recorder, something he had not done in quite a while. "We're going over the fence tomorrow, so to speak. Old Four-Square is headed up to the patrol vessel _Steadfast_ for something or other," he waved his hand dismissively, "in any case, while he's on that tin can he won't be here to stop us. A couple of the men, Rollins and Stenham, have been to the settlement before when he's been off world. A little bribe for the sentries and nobody will be the wiser. There's apparently some dive by the waterfront that will serve Alliance. Other places...well, no love lost there."

Shepard leaned forward, grasping his head in his hands and groaning. Was he...was he _drunk_? After a surprisingly long period of silence where he just sat there breathing, he looked back up, dropping his hands into his lap.

"That's right! Last week, I figured out why these colonists are still here. They're free." He smiled again. "This place is so awful nobody would sign up to the _usual_ we-own-you type contracts. To get anyone besides hardened ex-cons to sign up, people with _skills_, they had to be generous by comparison. Even with all those billions who would give most anything to get off Earth...all that poverty. All that misery." He shook his head sadly. "The rich always do fine, but there sure are plenty back there that still just hang on. If you ask me...this place isn't much better. But you know what they say - the grass is always greener."

Tali didn't know the saying at all, actually. She keyed a quick query. Ah - her people had something similar in fact: the other ship's claim always glitters more brightly. The recording went on.

"Anyway. So the colony is a bust, right? Minerals - all gone. But the colonists gave up everything to get here...don't want to go back. A bunch of 'em, they took contracts to other colonies but the rest, they just stayed put. And so they stay, and they ship in food, and there's this garrison...oh. And the colonists think the reason their stipends are so miserable is because they have to pay for _us_ to be here. They could even be right. All the legalese with corporations and colonies and the military-" again the irritated hand waving. "It makes my head hurt just thinking about it. Anyway, we'll be drinking the good stuff tomorrow!"

He was grinning when he stopped the recording, the first time that had happened. She was curious...Shepard was not a heavy drinker. There was the occasional glass of wine, but at the many bars and clubs they had encountered in their travels, never more than a compulsory glass to get information from the barkeeper. He had even considered doing away with those altogether after a frightening incident on Omega. She opened the next log, and was shocked at what she saw. Shepard's right eye was purple, swollen almost entirely shut, and he wore a white bandage around his forehead. He was not smiling as he started to speak.

"Well..." he began, scratching beneath his chin, "...that...certainly could have gone better."


	3. Chapter 3

"Goooood moooorning Merlin!"

The sudden loud announcement jolted Shepard awake in his chair, bashing a flimsy overhanging reading lamp with the top of his head as he lunged upright and spinning it into the wall with a cheap metallic clatter. He dully noted the time on his terminal screen as 05:00 sharp as the overly enthusiastic voice went on:

"Rise and shine, troopers, there's another beautiful day ahead - currently, we have heavy rain. Later in the day, more wind and rain, followed in the early afternoon by _cleaaaaaar skiiie-_ no, my mistake, more rain."

Rubbing at his temples with a groan, Shepard quickly realized the voice being broadcast to all the terminals was that of one Private Stenham as he heard grumbling and general discontent coming from the adjacent enlisted barracks. This problem was likely to take care of itself very shortly.

"Sunrise is at 06:12, with sunset at...well who cares, you can't see it anyway. Now a friendly reminder to take your vitamin D supplements-"

The sound of a door crashing open came across the speakers, followed by a loud, fatigue-burred voice.

"Stenham, you _ass!_"

That sounded about right, Shepard thought as he leaned over to strap on a sorry looking pair of black Alliance-issue boots, the bottoms encrusted with dark sandy mud that was like a layer of silicate crystal.

"Well hello Charlie, you're looking handsome as ever today!"

This prompted some creative cursing including novel suggestions for orifices in which to insert fragmentation grenades, and more grumbling voices accompanied with the heavy sound of furniture moving as Stenham laughed, continuing to greet the men who were definitely going to kill him. Groaning again, Shepard rose unsteadily from the desk, bracing himself against it with his hands. As he waited for the room to stop spinning, the debate in his mind continued as to whether to join the angry crowd or save his friend. As a matter of ineffectual routine, he rapped against the wall.

"Lieutenant!" he called hoarsely, head pounding with each syllable. Typically, there was no answer, but he hadn't been expecting one. Rainey was either already up and about his duties or, rather more likely, simply ignoring the ruckus in favor of letting Shepard take care of it as usual. Talk about an ass. Kicking the chair back underneath the desk with a rattle of plastic wheels on concrete, he shambled toward the door, pulling on a rumpled gray officer's overshirt.

"Hey, put that down! Put it _down._ Let me finish, damn it, you bunch of sad sack marine rejects!"

Yeah Stenham, that'll help.

"And in other news-" There was a sudden crash as Shepard stepped into the hallway, possibly expensive. "-I've just heard from our resident foot-in-mouth expert Rollins that he just watched a shuttle take off with Commander Four-Square safely inside!"

Instantly there was dead silence. Then, ragged cheers, gradually picking up in enthusiasm.

"Shit, you shoulda said that _first!_"

"Come on, y'all would _never_ get out of your racks if I did that, now, would you?"

Shepard had stopped short after Stenham's announcement, and now he raised an eyebrow in appreciation. It was always a hassle turning the men out of bed, and the spindly-limbed power systems specialist had managed to do that and have them wide awake well before 06:00. A little unorthodox, but if it worked...shaking his head in wonderment, he stepped to a terminal embedded in the wall.

"All right, knock it off. There's still work to be done even if the boss is away."

The groans he heard all around the barracks sounded quite sincere. But they all knew that it would be their asses if any boxes weren't ticked on Benoit's return.

"You gentlemen definitely need your beauty sleep but at least it's light duty today. When you finish your assignments, you're done. No replacement patrols are scheduled, but that means the guys out there are eating shit. They get preference in next rotation - I don't want to hear any whining when you get sent on a ride up our scenic coastal highway instead of snoozing at the gate."

That would get some grumbling, but they would accept it...if they remembered their impromptu vacations. It was rare to get any time to relax on base. He glanced at the time on the terminal screen.

"Gather up front in fifteen for the roster and current status report. The really _good_ stuff I'll save for stragglers, so don't be late. And Private Stenham, you report in ten since you're obviously ready to get to work."

He swiped his finger across the screen to close the pickup as he heard the men loudly giving indelicate theories to Stenham as to what his 'special duty' might entail. Ordinarily he might consider stopping them, but...it was _really_ early.

* * *

Shepard was checking over reports he had missed the previous night when Stenham rapped on the door frame of his quarters, also known as his 'office' since he didn't merit one anymore. He looked up bleary eyed from the data slate, and motioned for the stick-figure of a man to approach. The private did so, moving with a plastic swish from the heavy gray poncho he already wore over his thin shoulders.

"I managed to read your report this morning," Shepard indicated quietly, beneath the subdued jumble of voices coming from the bunk area. He fidgeted with the data slate, tapping at the brightly illuminated screen, opening and closing the same window over and over again.

Stenham bowed his blonde, brush-cut head in apology. "Ah, you were out cold by the time I was finished, sir. I was pretty sure you already knew what I was going to find so I didn't wake you." He looked up, meeting Shepard's gaze with small, narrowly spaced blue eyes that looked out over a beak-like nose.

Shrugging slightly, Shepard turned to pick another slate up from the desk that had already been opened to an inventory database. "Merlin won, last night," he muttered as Stenham took it from his outstretched hand. As the other man focused on the screen, scrolling through the application with jerky, overly broad strokes - because the slates themselves were obsolete - Shepard rubbed at the rough stubble on his chin. He needed to shave in a bad way. Stenham found what he was looking for and the pad made a series of soft tones as he highlighted items on the screen.

"This place beats everyone, sometimes." he said smoothly, eyes darting back and forth as he read the screen. "I think that's the first time I've seen you getting run over though, LT."

Shepard raised his eyebrows in mute acknowledgment, and leaned back in the chair as the springs complained loudly. Some might believe they had gotten off easy being sent to Merlin, but they quickly learned something everyone who had long been assigned to a forgotten outpost already knew: you didn't have to stop breathing to be dead to the world. The days ran together in relentless monotony. Tasks become so routine and practiced that it was possible to perform them half aware, in a surreal state between sleep and wakefulness that blacked out hours at a time. The damnable _weather_ was the same day after day, varying only in its intensity - rain. Drizzle. Gale-force winds or so still and dead it felt as if the very atmosphere had turned into soggy mush. It was just varying degrees of misery, and the men had to be out in it regardless.

Being the sole communications officer meant that one of his tasks was to go through the backlog of non-critical messages from the FTL relay and take action according to their content. Personal messages were handled automatically and were encrypted anyway. But Alliance communiques, supply status notifications, promotion lists, troop movements - all the general goings on of the massive Alliance military apparatus found their way across his desk. This evidence of _life_ was a crushing weight amidst the suspended decay of Merlin Garrison, something to remind him every morning and every evening of what he had thrown away. Like a puppy having its nose rubbed in its own mess, except that out here nobody expected him to learn anything from it. Not anymore. Just sit there and look at what you did, you stupid mutt.

"Sir?"

He looked up, suddenly pulled back to awareness. Stenham was proffering the data pad. Grimacing, he took it, turning it around to read the contents right side up.

"Sorry about that. Just thinking," he sighed. "Let's see what we have here."

After examining it briefly, his glare darkened.

"We're at least thirty rotations out from having these type fours again," he said, jabbing his finger at the glowing list of replacement parts. "We're looking at power rationing again unless we can squeeze more efficiency out of that dish."

Stenham winced apologetically. "I know, sir. I did state in my previous reports that the cells were failing-"

"Yes, and I passed that up to Benoit!" Shepard rasped in a low voice, tossing the slate carelessly back onto the desk with a clatter. "Declined, declined, declined! Everything is always declined. I get flack for using up the spares trying to keep things from failing, I get flack when things _do_ fail from lack of maintenance, and then a boot up my ass to get it fixed without any parts!"

The private smiled weakly down at his angry lieutenant. "Well, everyone here has that problem...I know hearing that doesn't make it any easier to deal with."

Shepard snorted in disgust. "You've got that right. Especially if it has to do with Bel's liquid love," he grumbled, using the less-than-respectful name for the most visible result of the asari scientist's terraforming efforts - relentless rain. "Speaking of which..." He jerked his thumb at the screen behind him, turning the chair noisily around as he did so. "Check that out."

Stenham positioned himself over his shoulder to better see the screen as Shepard gestured with an open hand. "Notice anything familiar?"

"Well, it's good old Coastal Six. Primary fuel cell pre-failure report, replacement recommended...declined; failure imminent, replacement required...deferred until next routine shipment," Stenham muttered. "That looks like a supply rat at work to me."

"Pretty indisputable evidence," Shepard agreed.

"Well, now the thing is probably going to go offline completely by the time we can get out there. It'll need the code reflashed."

"True." Shepard nodded, stroking his chin and glaring at the requisitions. "It's already flaking out. The Alpha knuckleheads up there had to replenish the cell over a week early, which they failed to note until _yesterday_ so it's going to be really borderline by the next switchover. And that's with a good cell, not this degraded lump of crap."

Stenham glanced at Shepard with a sour expression. "That means four FTPs operating free as the wind if it fails."

"Well, no, actually..." Shepard corrected, "Twelve, Thirteen, Fifteen, they should be in range of the secondary, Coastal Four."

He tapped at the input surface on the desk to bring up a map of the rugged coastline and its colorful overlapping bubbles of radio coverage from the monitoring stations. Both men looked up at a yellow radiation icon out to sea that sat well inside Six's range but teetered on the very edge of Four's.

"Fourteen never seems to get a stable signal, it's just a little too far out and there's so much noise...we'll probably have the SCRAM dance on that one."

"Wait, this doesn't make sense." Stenham reasoned, giving Shepard a worried look. "Won't they just send more hydro? We've got plenty, I don't know why it isn't just stockpiled out there."

"They had better. We've pretty well been staying off Bel's radar after we caught up on all the shit my esteemed predecessor let fall by the wayside. But losing an FTP..."

"Having two bosses isn't much fun, eh?" Obviously, he wasn't referring to the ghostlike Lieutenant Rainey.

"Sometimes, you know, I can't figure out who really runs this operation - Benoit or that asari. Alright...you're giving me that look again."

"Come on LT, that just makes sense. Terraforming is pretty much the only thing going on around here. Not exactly top of the list for the galaxy's best vacation spots."

"I guess...it's just that-" Shepard paused. This was entering territory he had been trying to avoid since being dressed down by Benoit. He shook his head, rising from the chair abruptly. "Alright, anyway, time to get these grunts out of here before they think I've forgotten about them."

Stenham cast a skeptical look at Shepard's retreating back as he went out the door towards the gradually amassing soldiers awaiting at the front of the building.

"Where in the world would they go?"

* * *

The day ended relatively quickly. As usual Rainey was nowhere to be found - just as well, given that he tended to arbitrarily question Shepard's way of doing things if he had an audience. The man was worthless as an officer, dumped on Merlin to keep him from tasks that required any actual skill or knowledge. In a sense it was still punishment, since if he hadn't just been dead weight he may have found himself as a staff officer aboard some shiny new patrol ship in a nice, safe inner-system gig. But despite the lack of danger or any real impetus to challenge oneself on such a vessel, the positions did require some degree of management skill. You couldn't get something for nothing in the Alliance military - unless you landed somewhere like _this_. Despite all the bluster from Commander Benoit regarding rules, procedure, implied surveillance...Shepard had quickly discovered that as long as the right bureaucratic hoops were jumped through, Benoit could care less about what kind of unit he was running.

Unless you pissed off Bel.

Most of the men both feared and were fascinated by Bel N'Zaria, the asari scientist and the lone non-human on the colony. She was also practically the only woman they had regular contact with. Benoit threatened to evict anyone who didn't adhere strictly to regulations, but in reality it was Bel who punched the tickets off of Merlin. While it wasn't immediately obvious, the threat was real. Those who had been shipped off to Sambhavita as a kind of last chance to quietly finish out their careers found themselves summarily ejected from service without a colony contract. If the ex-soldier had nowhere else to go, they were essentially stranded wherever the transport off-world left them. Others who had been posted to Merlin to keep them out of trouble - trouble being the elevated possibility of losing life and limb, or having to do actual work - were shuttled up to the patrol vessel on its next arrival, to be sent off to decidedly more dangerous assignments in the Terminus or even to the bleak 'locust' colonies.

Shepard hated using the enigmatic scientist as leverage, but he couldn't really complain about the results. If he ran into troopers that were being recalcitrant about their duties, the merest shadow of the possibility of a 'Violet Alert' being raised would generally get them off of their asses. This wasn't usually necessary for his Deltas but the Alpha Company 'soldiers' - if the term was applied loosely - were generally the worst of the worst. It turned out that most of the men assigned to Delta were stuck on Merlin due to some perceived slight. Many were there for insubordination or dereliction of duty not quite severe enough to be discharged. Others simply misunderstood the politics inherent in such a massive organization, stepped on the wrong toes, and found themselves standing alone in the rain, a ruck over their shoulders and a shuttle heading towards the clouds, heads still spinning from the speed and insanity of it all.

That was Delta. Alphas were mostly just shiftless, lazy types that made the moniker 'Chair Force' seem like a genuine compliment. Some of them had _volunteered_ to be posted here. Despite the fact that even the most dense of the bunch had realized that had been a terrible mistake, they were still content to do as little as possible for the duration of the stay.

Still, the prospect of being forcibly kicked off the dismal, soggy world was enough to keep them in line, even if only just.

And so it was that the privates at Coastal Six had been convinced to scrabble along a cliff face in the pouring rain to try and obtain a better signal as the station's fuel cells had begun to manifest their imminent failure earlier than expected. The signal had crept back into the green, but he had still fired off an urgent addendum to Benoit _and_ Bel advising that the station was likely to go offline sooner than later. He wasn't positive that Bel even knew who he was, as he had made a determined effort to avoid her if at all possible. Shepard himself had only seen her from a distance. But she didn't need to be able to visualize his appearance in order to understand the import of the message.

In any event, that was all behind them - literally - as the threesome made their way towards the settlement of Storm's Edge. A conveniently timed 'power failure,' a wink and a nod for the Delta sentries at the gate, and they were on their way. The rain was coming down steadily but it was almost pleasant in comparison to the muggy heat of the day. An intermittent breeze that slipped inside the plastic gray coverings they all wore helped to keep them cool. The gravel road, straight as an arrow, ran mostly downhill. They still had a couple of kilometers to go, walking in companionable silence, when Rollins nudged at Stenham's shoulder.

"What?" he hissed with some agitation. Rollins blinked in surprise and raised an eyebrow towards Stenham, whose gaze was obscured by his omnipresent AR goggles, something that some men depended on to escape the dismal atmosphere of Merlin. At the moment it was also useful to help them navigate in the near total darkness.

"Don't you want to know? Aren't you _curious?_" he whispered back, glancing at Shepard's back a couple paces ahead of them. "We don't get a lot of chances-"

"Keep your day jobs, guys, you aren't cut out for covert ops." Shepard called over his shoulder.

Rollins' eyes grew large in the dark, as Stenham groaned and shook his head. After a little while longer, feet scrunching on the loose surface of the road, he walked a bit faster to be just behind the second lieutenant. He licked his lips, wondering how to approach his curiosity as Rollins jogged up beside him noisily.

"Well, sir, we just...we were wondering..." he stopped.

"You're not from Earth are you, sir?" Rollins suddenly blurted out.

After a moment Shepard laughed. "I see where this is going. No, I'm not."

"And you're not...uh..." Stenham hesitated. "That is, most people won't shut up about where they came from. You haven't said a word."

Glancing over his shoulder, Shepard gave them both a look from beneath the hood of his rain-slicked poncho. "You're right. I haven't."

He turned back around with some finality. Both privates glanced at each other, Rollins, angling his head towards Shepard and urging the other on. Stenham shook his head, and kept glancing towards Shepard as Rollins grew more desperate and obvious. Finally, Shepard sighed, rolling his eyes towards the sky, and relented.

"I could say the same about you two. I know where you're _from_ - Mississippi back on old Earth for you, Stenham, and a colony brat a stone's throw from Proxima for Rollins. But not why you're here, so," he smiled in the darkness, "let's trade."

Stenham was silent, but Rollins cut in immediately.

"That's easy, for me. I didn't do so hot on the aptitude tests for...anything. But I have an uncle that's a colonel, out near the turian frontier. And here I am."

Must not have been a very _good_ colonel to have him stuck here, Shepard thought. While he did struggle with complex concepts and didn't know when to shut up, Rollins was a good soldier and a reliable worker. He just had to be given direction. They continued walking for a while before Stenham cleared his throat.

"I had a problem with chems, I guess," he muttered. "It was too much for me. Just out of basic, they put me on this old boat...the _CM Komorov,_ an in-system supply hauler. It was everything I could do to keep life support from shutting down, much less all the _other_ shit that was-" he stopped, swallowing. "Excuses. Anyway, they caught me with some Outrun and Hallex."

Shepard whistled. Neither substance was illegal in the strictest sense of the word, but their usage while on duty was banned. Outrun, a drug similar to methamphetamine without the worst drawbacks, he could conceptually understand for someone needing more hours in a day. But Hallex? Seeming to anticipate the question, Stenham continued quietly.

"I'd do twelve hours solid, some days sixteen. It was Outrun in the morning, and sneak a dose in somewhere around mid-day to stay propped up long enough to get everything done. Maybe one more if there was an emergency - Christ but there were enough of those - and then by the end of the week, I was just...gone. Faded to nothing. I'd sleep for twenty straight hours, and the Hallex took the edge off before it repeated itself the next week. And it worked, for a while. I just had to get to the end of that deployment."

"Hey, listen..." Shepard began, suddenly feeling guilty at the direction the conversation was heading. But the other man went on doggedly.

"I think they knew I had to be doing it, but nobody said anything. And then there was a problem with the secondary CO₂ 'cycler. Off I go below decks to handle it, it's near the end - last day of the week, some other guy takes over. I'm not really all there, and I'm about to 'fix' the problem when by sheer luck - and I do mean that, this guy was pathetic, half the reason I had so much to do - my associate starts early, so he comes down to check out this thing too. And bless him for once, he stopped me from venting the atmo on half the decks to space."

"Holy shit!" Rollins exclaimed, quite unnecessarily.

"Yeah, well..." Stenham actually grinned. "He did stop me. But they turned my berth after that and found the drugs. Goodbye Sol, hello Sambhavita."

"No problems here though, right?" Shepard asked tentatively.

"Oh, no. Not here. There's not enough parts available to fix what needs fixing, so the blame tends to fall elsewhere..."

"You're too kind," he replied lightly, kicking a rock off of the road into a deep puddle with rough-edged thatches of tall grass jutting from the surface. The splash was barely audible over the steady sigh of the rain.

"Hey, that's what you get in exchange for all those privileges!" Stenham chuckled, "You uppity officers and your _private rooms._"

As they continued towards the settlement, the group entered a heavy forest canopy that overshadowed the road completely. Shepard motioned for Stenham to proceed up front with his AR goggles to lead the way. The road was uniformly straight, but with the frequent tremors potholes and sometimes even jagged crevices could develop in the surface. The constant stress was the main reason that there were no paved surfaces anywhere in the colony, save for a hybrid rubberized tarmac used in the settlement. There had been few disturbances in the past week or so, but as the world swung around in its orbit towards perigee deep within Pivot's massive gravity well, the fault-lines would probably see plenty of action. Most of the major quakes were far out to sea, though, and all volcanic activity was subterranean. The steady volume of road repairs provided ample make-work for the less skilled colonists in Storm's Edge. Many of the rest were generally involved with the terraforming project somehow.

Shepard fixed his eyes onto the reflective stripes adhered to the back of Stenham's rain gear but he was acutely aware of Rollin's expectant stare.

"Ok then," he sighed, "a deal is a deal. What do you want to know?"

Stenham shrugged ahead of him. "Well, we know you aren't from Earth. I've noticed...you try to hide it, but..."

"Your accent," Rollins provided helpfully.

"Yeah. So, basically we're wondering-"

"You'd like to know what a sardine is doing here instead of being with the rest of the sardines?" he quipped.

Stenham flinched visibly at the term. It was an impolite but quite common way to refer to the space-born. "I wouldn't quite put it _that_ way."

"You know we aren't really liked that much among the rank and file...and you don't get much more 'rank' than here on Merlin. I'd like it if you two would keep this to yourselves, for all the good it'll do."

Rollins bit his lip and nodded, and Stenham raised a hand in acknowledgment, keeping his eyes ahead. Spacers were an insular, tight-knit bunch and they tended to treat grounders with disdain and condescension. Their skills made them highly valuable in Alliance service, however, those few that did choose it - and the perception was that they basically served in 'easy mode' throughout their careers, landing all the cushy assignments and early promotions.

"An added bonus, my mother is an officer going places, with good cause, not just being raised in quarter-grav. I'm pretty sure everybody does know that much. So, I try to keep quiet about the rest."

"Fair enough, sir," Stenham put in, face invisible, "but pardon me for saying so, you must have done something pretty bad to be stuck here. You're...not like other officers I've met. I've met spacers and officers both, and that gives me reason to think you'd turn out to be something on the level of Benoit. But you're more like enlisted. I mean that as a compliment - you're always out there throwing in with the rest of us on these shit details. You get mad and push up the chain on the requisitions that get rejected, instead of just letting it go. It might seem like a little thing, but...well, look at _Rainey_, sir."

"Yeah," Shepard nodded, as Rollins for once was struck mute by Stenham's frankness. "It was pretty bad I guess," he put into the expectant silence, "let's just say...it was pretty bad. I'm still struggling with it, unlike you, Stenham. I'm not sure how much I can say."

They continued beneath the broad-leaved trees, feet crunching wetly on the damp gravel road. Shepard had realized that his opinions on alien races were regarded as outdated and provincial by most serving in the Alliance, despite the caustic, casual bigotry he experienced in the academy and shakedowns in Sol system. It wasn't something he wanted to discuss with these men. He had reasons enough, but they were unlikely to understand. Nobody seemed to.

"That's it?" Stenham suddenly asked, looking over his shoulder.

"The deal was I'd tell you where I came from, as I recall." He made a sweeping gesture, opening his arms towards the sky. "I come from the stars! Or halfway there, anyway. We were slumming around in Sol's outer shell."

"Ha. I guess I should pay more attention." He sounded mildy disappointed. He stopped and fumbled beneath the poncho for a moment, bringing out the OT on his arm. The road lit up briefly as he checked the map downlinked from the network above. "We're about there..."

As they continued over the next rise the settlement came into view at last, streets lit amber and spotted with green halos of light suspended overhead.

"Squall warnings," Stenham pointed out when Shepard asked about them. "If they're yellow it's best to stay away. Blue strobe...well, if you can still stand upright, that's something. They don't use red because you can't see it very well in daylight. But there's sirens too, so you can't really miss it if you're somehow blinded."

They were waved through a monitoring station that also served as a kind of outpost by a bored looking private about a kilometer from the town proper. It was officially the closest the Alliance troopers were allowed to approach due to friction with the colonists. Shepard was only mildly surprised at the completely nonchalant pass they had been given when he saw the Alpha designation on the man's shoulder. As the road suddenly turned to solid pavement, Stenham stopped and turned to Shepard, removing his helmet from beneath the hood and motioning to him to do the same.

"Ok, here's what we're going to do, sir. Don't talk to anyone and try not to make eye contact. We just keep moving. Treat it like moving through a hostile area since, well, that's pretty much what it is."

He winced. "Is it that bad? Why did we leave our sidearms then?"

"The biggest risk is getting mugged. How'd you like to explain to Four-Square that your weapon is missing? Or, better, why you shot up a bunch of colonists off-base?" He shook his head. "No, this is best. Trust me. And give me that," he said, pointing at the deceptively simple helmet Shepard held in his hands. In actuality, it was crammed full of sensors and communications software, and was easily one of the more expensive items they were issued. He tossed it over, and Rollins did the same. Stenham stepped off the road walking behind a low pile of stones, ducking down out of sight. When he stood back up his hands were empty.

"That takes care of that. They won't want your OT 'cuz of the biometrics and the fact it's a damn antique. Let's go!" He grinned, clapping Shepard on the shoulder. "Don't worry sir. Just being safe. They're actually pretty decent at Eunice's place."

"Let's go, let's go!" Rollins urged excitedly. "I've been waiting for this all week!"

As they entered the settlement, Shepard felt the cold stares they were getting from the few colonists that had gathered outside, in small knots beneath lights and overhangs. These people knew outsiders instinctively. They were silent, ghostly figures, veiled by rain, most with faces darkened by protruding hoods. Shepard began to doubt that this was a good idea.

"Don't worry, sir, we're almost there..." Stenham whispered, as if sensing his unease.

They rounded a corner and were soon walking alongside the looming seawall, towering almost twenty meters above them and seeming to actively lean outward to push the waters back. He paused, momentarily mesmerized by the shimmering green lights perfectly spaced atop it. The rain fell in sheets with a steady patter; mists blew over the top of the wall. There was a incessant rush of white noise from the waters crashing against the base of the tall barrier wall. He snapped out of it as Rollins tugged on his sleeve.

"We shouldn't hang about outside, sir. Come on."

"It's not far. Next beacon," Stenham called. He pointed up at the next green light along the seawall and set off, Rollins falling in behind. After another quick glance around the empty street Shepard followed.

They finally approached their destination. A sign propped out front of the small building read "The Flipped Canary", and had a picture of a bird's legs sticking up inside a wire cage. Apparently it was a legacy from when the colony had been more productive and there was some meaning to terrestrial miners, although Shepard had no idea what it inferred. Stenham practically skipped up to the door, which slid open and sent light - warm yellow light, _real_ light - out into the street. Rollins and Shepard eagerly followed him inside, their apprehension immediately washed away.

"Eunice!" Stenham called, causing a rather plain older woman behind the bar, silver hair tied in a tight bun atop her wrinkled head, to start and turn to them. He perched the AR goggles up on his forehead. "Three house brews, if you please!"

Shepard took a moment to look around the place. Although rather small, with only four booths and three sets of tables aside from the bar itself, it was pleasant and he felt as if something that was missing before had been replaced. There was a man sitting in a corner booth with a rain spotted gray poncho, a reflective 'CR' plastered across the front. He was grizzled and looked tired. Their eyes met, and the man gave the faintest nod before returning his attention to his drink. The tables and chairs seemed to be made out of the native tar-black wood from the forests. The proprietress' response brought his attention back.

"You can't be here!" Eunice rasped in a shocked voice. "Leave, now!"

Ok. That was about enough of that. Shepard walked up to the bar and sat down in one of the long-legged chairs as Stenham just stared, confused.

"Look, lady," he began, looking up at the woman in the filthy apron. Her mouth was set in a thin line but her eyes were wide. "It took us a long time to get here. And we're not leaving until-"

"Who is this?" she interrupted, looking to Stenham while pointing at Shepard. "You'd best drag him out of here if you know what's good for you."

Stenham opened his hands, looking back and forth at his obstinate lieutenant and the clearly nervous old woman. "Eunice...what's the problem?"

She seemed to relax, barely, but kept glancing towards the door. "You know I won't turn down good credits, boy. But there was an accident, pretty bad. Talon is coming, and you don't want to be here."

Stenham raised an eyebrow. Rollins had turned white. "Got it. That explains a lot. Let's go, sir. We'll have to do this another time."

"No," Shepard responded, crossing his arms. "I'm not leaving until I get my drink."

"Oh for the love of-" Eunice spun quickly around, grabbing a rapid-bio disposable cup from the rack behind her. She turned back to the bar, pulling a tap and filling the cup with a foaming, golden-brown liquid. Stenham spoke up as she poured.

"Sir, we should really go. Talon is no joke on a _good_ day."

Rollins looked around the room as if seeking another exit. "LT, come on already!" the heavyset soldier pleaded. The man in the corner booth was standing, hurriedly gathering up his things.

Eunice skidded the cup across the bar to Shepard, causing the contents to slosh over the brim. "There. Now get _out!_"

Shepard fumbled at his wrist to activate his OT, suddenly flustered. "I uh...let me pay-"

"Forget it sir, we'll pay later," Stenham chattered in a rush. "If Talon-"

"Who the hell is Talon?" Shepard said loudly, picking up his beer. The man from the corner booth had reached the door, which opened as he approached and tried to rush out. But he bounced off of something outside, stumbling back and muttering low curses - his jaw suddenly closing with a snap as he looked outside, and froze.

"You, Henry. Outside."

The grizzled man paused long enough to look at the Alliance soldiers with wide eyes before turning to bolt out the door. Shepard heard his footsteps splashing down the street as the voice's owner pushed through the door.

It was the biggest man Shepard had ever seen.

He stood a good two meters tall and almost half that wide, completely blocking the door. Water ran in rivulets off a bright orange rain slicker striped with reflective tape, pooling around heavy boots with exposed composite toes. The hood was thrown back in favor of a white helmet with a wide brim channeled to divert water off the sides. His features were flat, set in a boulder-like head with a neck about as wide, and a nose that...well, his nose was covered by a metal bridge that attempted to match the color of his skin but failed. Shepard caught a glint from beneath the poncho as the man strode into the room another step, and he tensed. A weapon? He slowly set his beer back down on the bar, all desire to drink suddenly gone. He swallowed as the man sneered at him, pulling his thick lips into a snarl.

"And who the hell are _you?_" he rumbled, as more men filed in behind him, completely blocking the exit. There were a lot of them. Seven. No...ten. And sounded like more outside. Shepard raised his empty hands, not quite in a gesture of surrender.

"We're just here for drinks. Like you. But actually, we were just leaving."

Talon's heavy brow lowered. This had to be Talon. Malice flashed in his brown eyes as he maintained contact with Shepard.

"Leave?" he said quietly. He grinned, looked from side to side at his men, who also wore unpleasant smiles. Turning back to Shepard, he lifted his arms in a mocking gesture of welcome, exposing the source of the metallic gleam he had seen earlier. "Why would we want you to leave?" he bellowed.

"Oh, shit..." he heard Stenham mutter as he backed away towards Shepard, pulling Rollins by the shoulder. Rollins was catatonic. With good reason.

Talon's right arm was a glittering lattice of polished metal that went up beneath the heavy vinyl jacket to the shoulder. Totally synthetic. He could plainly see servos and rapid-hydraulics. How it was powered he couldn't immediately tell...but there had to be room inside that massive body for a lot of equipment. The arm ended in...the only word for it was a 'claw.' It had obvious function as a more dextrous substitute for a human hand, but the six fingers and two thumbs were like blades that articulated into evil looking hooks at the end.

Talon, huh? Cute.

The enormous man walked ponderously towards Shepard and his men as the others flowed around silently to envelop them. They weren't getting out of here unless they were allowed out, it was clear. Shepard felt himself involuntarily push back against the bar and slide off the chair, suddenly feeling a cold sweat breaking out beneath his already soaked uniform. This was not good. Not good at all.

"Look...we've got no issue with you-"

"Oh no?" Talon cut in with a mocking tone, "No, I reckon not, with the way you all sit nice and safe back at that play fort you call a base. Meanwhile, it's our necks on the line every day out beyond the wall." He pointed abstractly in the direction of the door. A door Shepard would dearly like to use immediately. The man's snarl showed a flash of white. "I don't know. I kinda feel like we need to get our money's worth. You know - make you work for it."

Shepard and his men were frozen by those words and the angry rumble of agreement from Talon's mob, and suddenly what had been a flippant jaunt out away from the base gained the aura of something quite possibly deadly. He tried to swallow his fear, and glanced at the irritable proprietor of the bar. From the stoney features of her face he could see she was not in agreement with Talon - but the faintest twitch of her head in the negative, however remorseful it might have been, was not something that gave him any comfort. He licked his lips.

"I uh...we're here to protect you. That is, we can't do anything about what's...beyond the wall, as you say, but if something came from beyond the _atmosphere_..." his voice trailed off. Talon looked thoughtful. His heart skipped a beat: could he seriously be considering-

"You. The way you talk. You're a fuckin' _sardine._"

...oh. Wonderful. The mood seemed to darken even further, and the three troopers found themselves pressed closer together as the colonists closed the noose around them, Talon stepping slowly towards Shepard with an animal grin.

"Sir..." Stenham muttered, in a surprisingly calm tone, "I think we don't have a choice."

"I think you're right." Shepard agreed. His vision seemed to clear as he accepted that there was going to be an altercation. He gritted his teeth as something took hold of him. The sneer on the turian officer's face as he was dragged away by the MPs, clutching his shattered fist. Benoit's condescending glare across the desk. The terse, business-like messages from his _mother_ who had all but given up on him. Standing in a darkened academy dorm, staring at the glowing letters on the slate in his hand: We regret to inform you...

He noticed the chair was in his hands just before he was consciously aware that he was swinging it at Talon's head. Talon was smiling, his goal achieved. He ducked it easily, as if it had been in slow motion - and he lunged for Shepard like a bolt, smashing head-down into his torso. Shepard flew backward, flailing, gasping for breath as the wind was knocked out of him. He knocked over two or three men on his way into the tables lining the far wall, and they greeted him with the dry snap-crack! sound of wood being splintered to pieces. In the process his poncho was flipped up across his face and he wrestled urgently with it as he lay with his back against a broken table, kicking blindly with his feet at any aggressor that might approach. He could hear shouts and the sound of a struggle-

He felt a heavy weight on both his legs, as colonists tackled him to stop his thrashing. He tried uselessly to shake them off, until one of them roughly pulled the flap of plastic from over his face - and he stopped. It was over. Stenham had both his arms held out and pulled back from his body, and Rollins was struggling weakly in a choke hold, held by a man whose skin was so pale the whites of his eyes seemed yellow. Their injuries appeared to be light, apparently they hadn't been ready for Shepard's attack and had been taken by surprise. As he gazed dully around the room - ten or so men - he couldn't blame them. His eyes snapped up suddenly as Talon stood over him. The men holding his legs relented, moving off to the side. Talon looked down at him sadly as he lay there.

"Well, that was pretty silly of you to take the first swing there, chief."

"Go to hell," Shepard muttered.

Talon opened his arms, and Shepard winced involuntarily at the sight of the prosthetic steel monstrosity. "Maybe I will, but it won't be because _you_ told me to." He spat on the floor with feeling. "I've got ten witnesses to say you started it. And now-" he took a step towards Shepard, grabbing him by the hair and pulling him forward, onto his knees. Shepard protested with a gurgling, growling rage, the anger and shame causing him to see red that couldn't be attributed to Sambhavita's angry glare, clawing uselessly at the iron grip pulling painfully at his scalp.

"Now," Talon continued, in an emotionless voice that made his skin crawl, "it's time to take out the garbage." In a smooth, practiced motion he drove a metallic fist into Shepard's gut, causing him to double over violently - his head meeting Talon's ready knee. He collapsed bodily onto the floor like a rag doll as Talon released his grip on him as if he was something unclean. He looked up at Stenham, eyebrow raised. The skinny private was breathing hard, trying to tamp down his fury at the treatment of his friend.

"Do me a favor would you?" Talon said dismissively as he turned away from the two troopers to head to the back of the bar, signaling for his men to release them. "Take that out to the curb, if you don't mind."


End file.
